First Trip to Market

Today I had my first trip to the market. It’s quite different here than in Mozambique simply because they speak English so I can bargain with them instead of relying on Coulter’s Span-uguese (his attempt at speaking Portuguese by speaking Spanish with a Portuguese accent). I don’t like having to bargain; I’d rather just pay, but it’s just part of life here. It doesn’t help that they always overcharge the Mzungu (white person). It wasn’t too bad, though. Jennifer is my only roommate that’s here and she’s been trying to show me around and help me get things. But she said she only went to market a handful of times last year and that she’s not the best person to show me around. It’s alright though; at least I’ve got someone to try. We took a Boda Boda (bicycle taxi) back to our house from town. It was nice that we didn’t have to walk quite so much. I felt like I was going to fall off the whole time and I couldn’t quite figure out where exactly I was supposed to hold on. Our house is on a hill with a road full of potholes and I felt certain that the guy was going to hit a pothole just wrong as we were zooming down the hill and that we’d both go flying over the rails. That didn’t happen though. He pulled over at my house and tried to charge me almost double from what Jennifer paid her Boda man. He said “But this one is very heavy” trying to explain why it was so much more. That’s a great boost of confidence right there. I, of course, did not pay the first price he quoted me. I paid the same that Jennifer did.

Yesterday I rearranged my room and unpacked most everything. It feels much better than the nasty cement room I came into when I first arrived. I had a lot of cleaning to do. I don’t think anyone has cleaned the room over the past 2 years. I have some more organizing that I need to do. When I got here 2 out of 3 trunks came with me. The 3^rd arrived yesterday and my teammates will get it from the airport when they pick up some of our returning teammates tomorrow. So when that gets here I’ll have some more unpacking to do.

I went over to the school today. The rooms are tiny, but I guess they don’t need to be very big when I don’t have very many students. I brought over the binders with my curriculum in them, but I haven’t looked through them yet. I have a lot of planning I need to do. I’ve got to figure out my classroom rules and things like that along with scheduling things. September 3 is our first day of school, so I have a bit more time to prepare. I’m teaching 3-12 reading, grammar, and literature and then one study hall. It’s going to be so different from anything else I’ve done. I hadn’t even thought about needing classroom rules until I met some of the boys a couple of nights ago. It’ll be an interesting learning experience full of trial and error.

Tomorrow we’ll go to church at Mbale Church of Christ, then out to lunch somewhere, and later that night have a community bible study with other expatriates around here (and there are a lot!).

I’ll try to post some pictures and videos after I get settled in some more. :)