Really quickly!

Oh hey. I only have a couple minutes on the internet here in Kampala, so this is just a quick update. I have another blog post typed up on my laptop to post at some point, hopefully sometime next week. But everything is going really, really well, and I'm loving Africa as much as the last time, although I can't believe it's been two and a half weeks already and I can't believe it's only been two and a half weeks so far. I'm learning to speak Ateso, which is spoken out in eastern Uganda, so that's where I'll be headed in about eight weeks or so when we all split up and head to site (and I'll know specifically where my site is in like six weeks or so). And I'm living with a Ugandan family and the other night they told me that I'm already starting to change color and that in one year I'll look just like them and I'll be African. And they're African so I feel like they know what they're talking about. I walk 45 minutes to and from training each day and have at least fifty kids yelling "See you, muzungu!" and waving the whole time but they're adorable so you can't get mad about it and the walk is nice too, over rolling hills through banana trees and fields of cattle once you get out of town and stop having to dodge the boda bodas and taxis that kick up the red dust that covers everything here.

I don't know if that makes it sound nice or not, but I am loving it. Being back in Africa makes my heart happy.

More later this week (hopefully).

Pack It Up, the Third

Adding one more thing to the packing list: this guy.

He shoots mini-Polaroids and is seriously awesome and I can't wait to be able to give the pictures out and/or hang them on my walls.

(Much thanks to Whit...)

Home

I'm also going to miss: Concerts at Neumos / the Showbox / the Crocodile / the everywhere else. The free concerts at the Mural, and Block Party. Lying in the grass and reading in Cal Anderson Park on sunny afternoons. Judging hipsters in Cal Anderson Park at all times and in all weather-systems. Monday nights. Jeopardy-time. Elliott Bay (the bookstore and the body of water). The chants at the Sounders games and at the George and Dragon. Trivia. Paseo (but I said that already) and, along those same lines, Serious Pie / Red Mill / Mr Gyro's / Hopvine / the Taco Hut / Molly Moon's / all those other places we love to eat. Nighttime bike rides. Angry Birds. Snow days. Fremont Oktoberfest. Fremont Solstice Parade. Fremont. Capitol Hill. Ballard. GChat. Those two cats in the mix. Alki and its bonfires and sunsets and frisbee and pizza and beer. KEXP and KUOW. HIMYM and LOST. Maybe even the Jersey Shore. The purple Bandit. Rock-climbing off Exit 34. Hiking and snowboarding. Sunriver. Leaving and coming back and the feeling, when you get back, of being home. The Olympic Peninsula and when you could see the mountains from the deck. Apple cider whiskey on the deck with a winter sunset when it's icy cold out. BBQing on the deck with a summer sunset when it's sticky hot inside the apartment. Walking around the city when you come around the corner of a building or to the top of a hill and you see the Space Needle sticking up into a sunny blue-orange-pink-purple or cloudy gray-gray-gray or a Blue-Scholars-inkwell of a starry night sky, reminding you where you are and how lucky you are to be here in this city and with these people during these -- the best, the best, the best -- years of our lives and your heart swells to fuller than full so that you never want to leave even when you do want to leave, so you can't leave, not really, because you're taking so much of it with you, in your head and your heart, and all you hear as you look out at your home, at your city, is that one distinctive voice, giddy and truly happy, reminding you, as if you could ever, ever, ever forget, saying, "We live here."