Hippo sighting!

This is a group of hippos that we saw in the Nile River.



They sleep in the water during the day and come out at night to eat. Hippos are actually one of the most dangerous animals in the park and they kill more people every year than any other African animal! BUT, I like them. I was most excited to see the hippos…and they didn’t disappoint me, they’re actually pretty cute.

Overall the safari was amazing. The air smelled like jasmine and wild roses and jungle. It was thick and I could feel the moisture in the air. It felt easier to breathe there, like the air was clean and pure and full of oxygen from all of the trees.

Besides hippos, we saw lots of other beautiful animals too - giraffes, buffalo, lions (and lion cubs), elephants, warthogs, crocodiles, and some huge birds like the hornbill. It was a very surreal experience, and also one of the biggest thrills I’ve ever experienced. There is something about being 20 feet away from a lion with nothing between you - no glass or chain link fence - that is extremely exhilarating. It was the experience of a lifetime.

In the wild

Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary.

Safari!

Safari in Murchison Falls National Park.

July 28th.

Ahhhh just got back into my latest hotel room in Masindi, Uganda! It’s absolutely beautiful, and my group and I spent most of our evening sitting by an outdoor fireplace under the stars. The stars are INCREDIBLE here by the way!

I wasn’t able to write yesterday because we were so busy with our research meetings and assessments, but now I have time to fill you all in. I’m finally beginning my weekend adventure in Uganda’s National Park. We are all getting up at 4 am to go on a safari! It should be an amazing day. After the safari, we are going on a boat ride on the Nile (with hopes of seeing some friendly hippos and crocodiles) and then doing another game drive in the evening. Don’t worry, I’ll have pictures to prove it when I get home!

Colors

Lira’s Market!

A new companion

Meet Mercy.

Life's Little Instruction Book.

Last year, after brunch with some girlfriends in Dinkytown, I walked by a small bookstore with a cart of used books sitting outside. The first one I saw was a small book with a plaid cover. I brought it inside and asked how much it cost, and out of pure kindness the owner told me to take it for free. I rediscovered the book while packing for my trip a few weeks ago and decided to bring it with me. Who knew such a little book could be so full of good advice.

“Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do a little. Do what you can.”

“Every now and then, bite off more than you can chew.”

“Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.”

“Don’t overlook life’s small joys while searching for the big ones.”

- Life’s Little Instruction Book

http://www.instructionbook.com/llib.html

Mercy.

Today I met Mercy Akello, a 13-year-old P-7 (7th year in primary school) student with extremely short hair and bright eyes. She was timid, but I know that she is bold at heart because out of the 1,600 students at Lira Integrated School, she was the one who wrote me a letter.

When I asked Mercy why she chose me out of our group of visitors, she thought for a minute, choosing her words carefully and trying to translate her thoughts into understandable English. She said, “Sometimes you see a person and you know that they are great. I looked into your eyes and I knew that you were a good person.”

I struggled to hold back tears at first, but then I smiled and told her that I know exactly the feeling she is talking about, and that I felt the same thing as soon as I met her. That made her smile too.

Mercy told me that next year she’ll begin secondary school, another 6 year process. After that, her dream is to travel to Kampala (Uganda’s capital) to attend University and become a doctor.

As I walked away from our meeting after saying goodbye and promising to talk with her again, I was overwhelmed with the sadness and injustice of her situation. Mercy is HIV positive, but doesn’t know it. The irony in her aspiration to become a doctor is that her mother and brother both died before reaching an age that would have allowed them to complete the required schooling to become a doctor here. The irony in her name is that although she doesn’t know it now, mercy is something she will be praying for some day.

I can only hope that the medication she is taking is sufficient to keep the HIV under control. It makes me wonder what percentage of children with HIV escape the development of AIDS and live to become doctors.

I decided that I’m going to give a small amount of money to the headmistress of the school to pay for postage so Mercy can send me letters, and I’m determined to find a way to keep in touch with her while I’m abroad. I wrote her a letter in response and gave it to her today, and I’m expecting another hand-delivered letter from her tomorrow.

Again I find myself struggling to accept the things that I cannot change, but maybe a “pen friend” as Mercy calls it, is enough to make the small change that I can.

Power's out!

I’m writing this post by flashlight because (surprise, surprise) the power’s out! This happens much more frequently than I anticipated. Just one more thing to add to the list of things we (or I) take for granted in the US. Thankfully I have a good book to read by flashlight…something that I should do more often. There’s something different, and definitely more fun, about reading yourself to sleep under the covers with a flashlight. I’m reading Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell. It’s the perfect light read for people who like food, cooking, or just something funny and lighthearted to read by flashlight.

There is a lot that I have to catch up on because my laptop was dead yesterday due the combination of a lack of electricity in our hotel and the inconsistency of my stupid converter plug. My laptop is charged now, so hopefully I can continue posting on a regular basis. I’ve gotten kind of attached to this blogging thing and was actually somewhat distraught when I couldn’t update it yesterday. I think it is a good way for me to reflect and process information, but something about knowing who reads it also makes me feel closer to home.

So instead of blogging yesterday, I jotted some things down in my notebook.

As you can see from the pictures posted below, we visited the nursery school yesterday. The kids are ADORABLE. They are sweet and friendly and clearly craving attention and physical contact. When we stepped outside to meet them during playtime, the children rushed up to me and clung to my arms, hands, and dress. They were literally swarming around us. I bent down to meet them at eye level, and they almost suffocated me! The nursery school visit has definitely been the hardest day for me in terms of sitting through classes and learning about the classroom instruction. The teachers in nursery are the least trained (they only need a one year certificate after secondary school), so I expected the methods to be poorer there than in the primary and secondary classrooms. I was definitely underestimating how “poor” the teaching would be. I sat in the back of a classroom for an hour and a half while a teacher instructed the 4-year-olds to repeat the sentence “George is a bad boy” over and over for about 15 minutes. After that exercise she took over 20 minutes to pass out their notebooks and told them to copy the sentence from the board. That was it. After passing out their notebooks, the teacher sat in a corner of the room and began grading the work of the students who were finishing. Other children were writing, and 90% of the kids were goofing around. In response to the disorderly classroom, Grace, the teacher, told them all to sing “If you’re happy and you know it”. I had heard this happen repeatedly in the other classes, so I wasn’t surprised and neither were the kids. Some of them started singing on autopilot while they stared out the window, and Grace continued grading while sporadically yelling at them with phrases like, “why are you so bad?” and “What is wrong with you? Why aren’t you singing? I hear those who are not singing! I will whip you!”. Talk about inefficiency and poor teaching methods.

Oh, I forgot, I also had to pull a plastic bag out of a small boy’s throat yesterday. It was in the second classroom I was observing and the teacher’s cell phone rang. She answered it in the middle of her lesson and stepped outside of the classroom to go and talk. No, I’m not kidding.

I was sitting in the back of the classroom growing more shocked by the minute when she hadn’t returned 5 minutes later. It’s a good thing I wasn’t falling asleep like the rest of the children were because I happened to be scanning the room at the right time and saw a little boy put a large piece of a dirty plastic bag into his mouth. And then he tried to swallow it. I instinctively jumped up and ran over to him, tipped his head back and used my finger to pull the bag out, but my heart was pounding. To me, that was a powerful demonstration of the consequences of the poor teaching and sheer lack of attentiveness to the students. I informed the teacher of what had happened, picked up the rest of the plastic from the dirt floor, and left the classroom to write some things down.

Overall, the experience was heartening because we met the children, informative because we observed the teaching, and mostly extremely discouraging.

A very wise woman once told me to look for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Every day I am gaining the wisdom to know the difference, mustering the courage to try to change the small things I can, and searching for the serenity to accept all that I cannot change here.

Today, she also told me this:

“ONE solid idea planted in ONE person’s mind will change generations.”

I think this piece of advice alone is why I am here today giving workshops to teachers who speak broken English and think it’s appropriate to beat their students; because if we can plant the idea that tomorrow they can be better teachers than they were today, there is a chance that this self evaluation will lead to improvement in teaching methods, relationships with students, and someday, a better learning community.

For now, I can only hope, but tomorrow is another day to make a small difference.

Sandy streets.

Downtown Lira - busy and colorful.

Downtown Lira.

Faces.

Just another school day

 

Visit to the Lira Integrated Nursery School

Morning walk to the market.

Today Kathryn, Aryn and I got up, ate breakfast, and walked the 20-minute walk into town to the market. It was so colorful that it made me want to buy some paper and colored pencils, sit under a tree and draw. I didn’t today, but maybe at some point on my trip I’ll have enough free time to do that. We mostly walked around and browsed people’s goods…a lot of fruits and vegetables and clothing. The market is a very lively place, and it is full of small stands made of large sticks with fabric draped over the top to provide shade. There are men and women sitting in them, many with sleeping babies wrapped in cloth. I wanted to take a million pictures, but something about the people made me resist. They seem so natural there, doing what they do almost every day to make a living. It felt wrong to ask to take their pictures, because although the market was beautiful and interesting to me, to them they are doing nothing spectacular that deserves being captured in a photograph. They are just finding a way to get by. So I kept my camera in my purse and just admired them on my own instead.

After an hour or so of walking we got hungry and found a small restaurant. The service at restaurants in Uganda is very different from the service in the United States. In Uganda the waitstaff have no sense of urgency whatsoever when serving you. They are not always smiling and polite (except in the hotels) and they don’t hesitate to tell you that half of the items on the menu aren’t available, nor do they apologize for it. It was surprising at first that you had to ask for everything, including silverware, a menu, and a glass of water, but I’m used to it now. The service is also exceptionally slow and we’ve learned to reserve at least 2 hours of our time for a small lunch. With all of this in mind, we sat down to eat and ordered some traditional African food- cassava (a root vegetable similar to potatoes that is usually boiled) with g-nut sauce (a brown paste that is made from peanut-like ground nuts), chipatti (a soft African flatbread), mashed bananas, rice, and goat stew. We tried to order boyo, which is a green similar to spinach that is often wilted and fried in oil, but they didn’t have it at the time. They were also out of Stoney, a brand of extra strong ginger ale that is popular throughout Africa. I’m hoping to buy some and bring them home with me to share!

Here are some photos of our meal:



Goat stew - Dad, be proud!!!

After our lunch, we continued to walk for a little while before heading back to the hotel. Did I mention that we moved from the guesthouse we were staying at into a hotel?! We decided to make the switch because although the guesthouse was beautiful, it was too far out of town and we lacked privacy. The hotel was definitely a good choice and I have my own room with a nice view. Take a look.


And this is the view from my balcony.


Anyways, on our walk home from the market I saw something that struck me and I took that opportunity to snap a picture.


This is a photo of a nursery school in Lira. It looked like I would have expected a nursery school in Uganda to look like at first, but then I noticed that there was something lining the top of the wall surrounding it. I looked closer and realized that it was colored pieces of broken glass. The concept continues to confuse me and is more than a little disturbing so it seemed worth posting. Every day something surprises me here, whether they are good surprises or bad ones, but each of them is adding to my knowledge and understanding of the culture. I’m trying to take it all in, and am glad that I have two more weeks to process and absorb all that I’m experiencing.

One last note- My internet at the hotel is fabulous…good enough for Skype! My Skype name is just Sarah Schwie, so if you’re family or a friend feel free to add me.

That’s all for now, time for another episode of Grey’s Anatomy and a good night’s sleep.

July 24th.

Today I was thinking a lot about what it is like to live in Uganda compared to what it is like in the US. It seemed funny what the biggest changes and hardest adjustments were for me…here are some examples.

Things that are especially different here:

1) I brush my teeth with bottled water.

2) The only coffee that people drink is instant coffee – which is surprisingly good.

3) All of the girls greet you with a handshake and curtsy.

4) I shower in cold water with a bucket of HOT (just short of boiling) water at my feet for a bucket bath.

5) People take pills to gain weight.

6) Every bed is covered by a mosquito net.

7) The bugs are twice the size as they are in the US.

8 ) “Bathroom” does not mean toilet, it means a place to “wash” and “toilet” does not mean toilet, it means a hole in the ground.

9) The soap operas are much worse…yes that’s possible.

Things that are the same here:

1) They listen to American music – some bad rap, a lot of Rihanna, and the occasional Shania Twain.

I’m sure there are more similarities, but the differences are more interesting. I know that I’ve even noticed things about me that are different since coming to Uganda…

1) I REALLY enjoy my time alone.

2) I anunciate every single sound when I speak.

3) I worship Purell and sanitizing towels (yes, mom, you were right).

4) I am no longer just a white person, I’m a “muno” or “muzungo”.

5) I have gotten used to strangers touching my hair.

6) I am valued at about 10 cows and 15 goats (the children told me that when we were talking about dowries). I’ll take that as a compliment?

Aids kills.

School courtyard.

A million matresses

Girls’ dormitory.

Washing day.

Smile

Primary school children :)

July 23rd.

Tomorrow is our first free day! It still isn’t entirely free, because we’re having the research committee that has been put together at Lira Integrated School over to our hotel for dinner, but tomorrow is the first day that we can sleep in. I can’t WAIT to get more than 6 hours of sleep! Our plan is to get breakfast at the hotel in the morning and then explore the town’s market in the afternoon.

On top of getting to sleep in, breakfast is always a treat here because of the African tea. African tea is black tea steeped in hot milk and heavily infused with ginger. It’s wonderful and a new favorite that I’m determined to bring back to the US!

I spent most of the day observing classrooms in the primary school today. While I was in one classroom, the headmistress of the school, Beatrice, came in and announced that she had a letter for me. She handed me a piece of notebook paper that was folded into an envelope, and inside was a page-long letter in very neat handwriting. It was from a primary school student, 13 years old, named Mercy Akello. I have never met her in person, but she has seen me standing in front of the students and speaking at assemblies and workshops, and sitting in on her classes.

This is the letter.

I found out some more information about her, like she also lost her brother to AIDS and she has two younger brothers also attending school at Lira Integrated. I was told that her father has struggled to pay the fees for all three of his children, and I know that when families cannot pay fees, the children are sent home from school. I am going to find her in class this week and talk to her more on my own, but my plan is to pay the fee for her upcoming trimester. For them school costs about 290,000 shillings per trimester, which equals about $50, so the cost is $150 for the year for a boarder, including all of her meals. It’s amazing to think that in the US we spend $50 on a pair of shoes, and the same amount of money feeds, clothes, and educates a child for 4 months.

I’m at the point in my trip where everything around me has sunk in and I’m really starting to gain some perspective. It is a lot of information to handle, and spending time with the children has really given me a lot to think about. I’m glad that I have some time to myself tonight to write this, and to wind down.

Luckily for me, I made an impulsive Target run before I left and splurged on 2 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy…I’m really looking forward to some mindless entertainment and a little dose of America.

July 22nd.

Yesterday was our first day visiting Lira Integrated School. The welcome was unbelievable. The school has 1600 kids, and they ALL participated in a full day welcoming ceremony for us. They paraded around and saluted us, and they sang to us for hours. The children are all so well behaved, but they seemed like they had been practicing for weeks. The headmistress of the school also made us sit in front of all 1600 students on a stage for an assembly. The assembly was long and was entirely focused on welcoming us, the visitors, thanking god for our presence and on having us speak to them. Honestly, we were all pretty uncomfortable…we felt like the welcome was way too much. The children were directed to present us with bottles of water on their knees and everything. None of us wanted to be treated like royalty, especially after we hadn’t had time to make any positive impact on their school yet! But they definitely have a great respect for guests.

And then there was today. Today was frustrating. We sat in on some secondary school classes and the teaching methods are hopelessly outdated. What was worse though is that we were expected to attend another “assembly”. In Uganda, respecting time does not mean much. In this case, for example, the assembly was supposed to run from 4 to 5, but we didn’t get out until 7. The assembly consisted of teachers and staff standing on a stage with a microphone (with hundreds of students seated on benches below) naming “culprits” who were guilty of “committing” misconduct at school. They were called up to the stage and openly humiliated by the teachers. The teachers would ask the students in the audience over the microphone (until the power went out), “Does everyone know what _________ did?” And the students would shake their heads. Then the staff would explain the crime in detail and warn the others of the consequences. During the 3 hours of that assembly I swear I experienced almost every emotion possible. First I was surprised, then sad, then nervous and uncomfortable, then worried, then angry…and when they talked about beating and whipping him in public I felt sick. I was preparing myself to leave the assembly if that happened, but they announced that it would happen afterward. It was upsetting to say the least. There are cultural differences that I appreciate and those that I could do without witnessing here.

We all went to visit a local street market after leaving the school so we could debrief about our experiences, and we all seemed to be in agreement about some of the practices. Otherwise, the children are wonderful. They are funny, outgoing, smart, and very dedicated for the most part. Tomorrow we’ll do more work with the kids, so I’m looking forward to it! And yes….they do have school on Saturdays.

Time to hit the sheets now; we have an early morning. Goodnight world!

Team

My awesome team- Nicki, Aryn, Katheryn and Pete

Contrast.

Green.

Pretty porch.

Absolutely beautiful.

July 20th.

I’m sitting on my bed in a little guesthouse in the middle of nowhere outside of Lira, Uganda. Today was LONG. After eating a poolside breakfast we left our beautiful hotel (that we stayed in last night in Entebbe). Two drivers picked us up, Charles and Edward, in a big van and we loaded our luggage and began the 4-hour drive to Lira. We stopped in Kampala, Uganda’s capitol, and bought two phones, and then we continued on to Lira. About two hours outside of Kampala, halfway to our destination, we all heard a leaking sound…which of course turned out to be the car breaking down. We were near a small cluster of huts (it was large enough to call a village) and we got out of the van to look at the damage. Small children began to cluster around us and we played with them while the drivers attempted to plug the leak. About two hours later, the men had managed to temporarily fix the leak with grass and leaves, and they suggested we continue on to Lira. It is important to this story to understand that driving in Uganda has just about no rules, and everyone drives at least 80 miles an hour (on the bumpiest and most unpredictable dirt roads I’ve ever seen), so we were all slightly nervous, and for good reason, because the car broke down again about 6 minutes later. That time we had to wait in the dirt at the side of the road for over an hour until our drivers somehow flagged down a mechanic who happened to be driving by. He also attempted to fix the car, but didn’t have the parts so he hitch-hiked into a nearby town to find someone with the tools. He returned and patched the leak for us and we left again. 4 minutes in to our second attempt, we heard a loud “pop” and realized that the leak had come unclogged again (probably because we were driving 90 miles an hour over a field of potholes). This time we had much worse luck and after waiting for several more hours, some people stopped to help us. They wanted to try to fix it, but we suggested that they help us get to a nearby town instead to find a taxi, or someone with a working vehicle. The men ended up riding their small motorcycle (called a bod boda) into a village to find some rope. Thankfully they returned to us and towed our car into the nearest village where were able to arrange a driver to take us the rest of the way to Lira. Some time after resuming our trip, I noticed that we had been in the car for what was well over the 2-hour long ride that we were promised to Lira. When we asked the driver, he said we were half way there, so we should expect at least 2 more hours. I couldn’t believe it! By this time it was getting dark too, and we were advised not to drive at night, but we didn’t really have a choice.

The story does have a happy ending though. After a very long day, we finally made it to Lira. The headmistress of the school in Lira, Beatrice, met us at a gas station in around 9 pm and took us to her beautiful home (this was by far the nicest house I’ve seen so far in Uganda!) and she fed us peas, rice, chicken, and chipate, which is an African bread.  We ate and then discussed our research plans and our visit to the school the next day. Finally, around 10:30 pm she drove us to a beautiful little guesthouse owned by her sister, where I am now (and where I took a bath/shower with freezing shower water and a small bucket of nearly boiling water on the floor).

Needless to say, this trip has definitely been an adventure so far. What an experience. It’s past midnight now, and we have to get up early to visit the school in the morning, so I should probably go to bed for the night. I’ll write again soon, and post pictures as soon as the Internet works well enough…fingers crossed that it happens soon!

 

July 19th.

I’m sitting on the plane flying over the Alps on my way to Entebbe, Uganda (we will stop in Rwanda for 90 minutes or so on our way there), which is roughly an 8-hour flight. The view out my window is beautiful now. Even from miles high, I can tell that the layout of the land is already so different here. I am currently flying over Greece near the Mediterranean Sea. The patchwork of colors no longer has a special order like it did when flying over the US where the patterns are blocky, like checkerboards- geometric and angular. The patterns that you see in the land here are more abstract and the lines are much softer. I can see multiple large bodies of water and little islands everywhere, and occasionally I can make out what looks like a city of tiny white tic-tac houses clustered together, forming quarter-sized white patches on the landscape. There are squiggly white lines that look like roads running all over the surface, and blue crevices that look like rivers. If it is so beautiful from up here, I can’t imagine what it would look like up close.

I keep thinking about what Uganda will look like, too. It is supposed to have some of the most diverse, exotic and beautiful plant and animal life in Africa. I’m trying to imagine now what the flowers and plants will look like when I see them with my own eyes. I’m picturing them as being big, bright, and saturated with color. I can’t wait to post pictures! I honestly still can’t believe that I’m going to be in Uganda for almost 3 weeks. It seems so surreal and so impossible, yet here I am, 3 hours away from walking on it’s surface. I have a funny feeling that reality won’t really hit me until I step off the plane and feel the ground under my feet.

As of now, though, I’m stuck on the plane, so for the time being I’m watching a little Sex and the City, writing, and doing all that I can to prepare myself for a major culture shock. I mean that in a good way. Mostly I’m excited to interact with the people there (many of whom speak English, thankfully). I want to learn from a first-person perspective how they live, what they do for fun, what they like to eat, and how they raise their children. I have so many questions, but I think that my first few days in the country will consist of mostly watching and listening. Even in my 3 weeks here I don’t know if I’ll be able to absorb half of the things I want to know about the people and their culture.

Even in Europe I was fascinated with the cultural differences. Everyone was amazingly fashionable, even the children! People in Amsterdam especially seemed to put time into their looks though. Everywhere I looked people were accessorized from head to toe. I’d normally consider myself a fashion-forward individual, but to be honest, I felt like a lazily-dressed tourist today- NOT my favorite label. But with my obvious jet lag (I was falling asleep on the way to the train this morning despite one delicious cappuccino) and backpack and rolling suitcase, I think the locals understood and cut me a break. I wasn’t stopped by the European fashion police at least, and made it safely and tiredly back to the airport. Happily for me, I bought some colorful floor-length dresses for Uganda so I can break this streak of capris and t-shirts. Anyways, the point is that I fell in love with Europe and its beautiful people, and would LOVE to make it back someday where I can fit into the crowd, ride a bike embellished with fresh flowers (yes, I saw many of them) or maybe a moped, and sip a latte while reading the paper (maybe even in Dutch or French).

That’s another thing that really struck me about Europe- scanning the streets full of people and never being able to guess their native language, or language of choice. I kept my ears open when anyone passed me, trying to guess what language I’d hear them speaking while they were chatting on the phone or conversing with a friend. Somehow I could NEVER get it right. I heard Dutch, German, Spanish, and Portuguese…and English in a million different accents. People look and sound so worldly. There also seems to be this kind of unity among Europeans (at least in their good fashion sense) while maintaining a good amount of diversity, which makes people-watching really fascinating. They all stood out as individuals with unique styles, yet somehow they seemed to blend together into one well-dressed population; kind of like the perfect outfit: different colors, layers and patterns that for some reason just work together.

The combination of fashion, great food, and beautiful scenery (like the canals in Amsterdam) makes it hard for any girl to leave Europe, but maybe someday I’ll come back to explore.

For now, though, I get to focus on another area full of cultural richness (all packed into a pretty small space)…Uganda. To put it in perspective, the entire country of Uganda is slightly smaller than the state of Minnesota. Pretty amazing, huh? It seems like it would only be a speck out of the plane window after watching the hours of ocean go by. I just opened the shade, though, and the edge of the light blue water is finally fading away into the distance. Now all that’s below us is desert, and I think I know what that means…

We’re in Africa!

Our plane is flying over Egypt now, and all I can think about is how it reminds me of a giant sandbox (at least until the Nile River cuts through it somewhere).

I’ll keep my eye out for pyramids (if I see any, I’ll make sure to take pictures J), and the next time you all hear from me I’ll probably be sitting in a small Internet café in Uganda with new adventures to write about and pictures to post.

Lots of love to all of my friends and family!

 

An early morning

Guest house:

A cappuccino, croissants and cheese, a waffle cookie, and buttered bread with sprinkles for breakfast. I love this place. Now, off to Africa!

Zandvoort, Netherlands.

Traveling is such a privilege. Each place that you visit has such a distinct personality, and the longer you stay there, the better you get to know it. It’s almost like meeting a new friend that makes their mark in your memory forever. That’s how I feel about Zandvoort already. It’s funny how quickly you feel like you’re at home in some places. I’m sitting in bed, writing, and somehow am already sad to leave this little guest house by the seaside. It’s so charming- decorated with delicate chandeliers, vases of orchids, petite reading lamps, gold-framed mirrors, sofa beds and knitted blankets. And the people here match the decor. They are charming, bright and hospitable. The woman who owns the bed and breakfast, or the “Pension Corper” (Pension is Dutch for guest house and Corper is the last name of the family who owns it) welcomed us at the gigantic wooden door and handed us the silver skeleton keys to our rooms. She asked us all about our travels and made special arrangements to pack us “lunch packages” to take with us in the morning since we’ll be leaving around 6:30 am to take the 7:00 train. I’ve been here no more than 7 hours and I’ve managed to fall in love with the architecture of the buildings, the quaint shops, AND the hot chocolate. The temperature today was only in the high 50s, and because it’s shore hugs the North Sea, Zanvoort is windy and the air is brisk. I was managing fine until we walked down to the beach to get close to the water, and when I wasn’t looking (I believe I was smiling for a camera) a very cold and very large wave crept up behind me and soaked my tennis shoes. So, in desperate need of warmth, we walked a few more blocks until we found a cafe where I ordered a hot chocolate. It was worth getting my feet wet and nearly freezing just for the hot chocolate :). There were also several shops selling gelato, which is ironic for a small town that doesn’t ever get that warm. But I’m sure Africa will be a different story and that I’ll be craving ice cream after a day or two in the beautiful 80 degree weather that they’re predicting for our stay. It’s after midnight here, so it’s time for bed, and I’ll be off for Uganda in the morning! After today, internet may be unreliable, but I’ll do my best to explore and search for internet cafes. Can’t wait to be in Africa tomorrow! This adventure is just beginning.

North Sea.

First stop: Zandvoort, Netherlands!