7/19/11

Today has been exhausting but good! We said goodbye to Amy, who has a couple of kids and a job and everything back in L.A. and so had to get back to her real life, and then went over to Ali's host house to pick her up and help her move into our house. Ali has had a bit of a rough experience with ELI so far. She arrived in Entebbe at 1am and wasn't collected by the ELI representative, so she just caught a matatu out to Iganga with the help of a friendly fellow traveler. Within a couple of days, another problem came up: $100 was stolen from her wallet while she was bathing, and the host family ended up accusing another ELI volunteer of taking it. Happily, we love Ali and have another room in our house for her, so our host family ok'd it and we moved her over here with us.
We also had to do laundry today, which would be really nice if there were a spot of shade to do it in, but as it is we have to sit in a concrete courtyard in sun, which has been pretty hot recently. Connor is the laundry-doing master- he has the physical strength and patience for it which I lack, so all I have to do is organize all of our clothes to be washed in order of whiteness to less-whiteness (because the water gets dirty pretty fast) and rinse them and hang them up to dry. Really, Connor has been so helpful on this trip- he's genuinely cheerful and selfless so much of the time- he's just a joy to travel with. I would go on, but everyone except for Connor's parents would probably find it irritating.