Many many good things (and a couple bummers)

Highlights of today:

*Chatting with Christi bright and early this morning (and yesterday I was able to Facebook chat with David and Christi, which was fun :P

*African tea at Chat 'n' Chino -- although Elizabeth's is still better :)

*Walking around Mbale with Erika. I got some bright patterned fabric which I'll have made into skirts sometime in the next five months... and I bought some earrings and a necklace. I need to keep buying beads so I'll have enough for the Christmas edonga (dance)... I'm told that when attending any type of celebration in Karamoja, you should wear every single bead and bangle you own. Forget about whether they match... just pile them on. I only had one strand of red akimat beads and one pair of green earrings, which is simply unacceptable.

*Refusing to buy into mzungu (white person) prices while shopping. One woman tried to sell Erika a skirt for 25,000 Ugandan shillings (~$10) when it probably should have been USH10,000 or less. They see our skin and double or triple the prices. One woman tried to sell me earrings for USH10,000 (~$4)  but I went around the corner and I bought some for 1,000 (less than 50 cents)! It's not that I'm so stingy... but it's not right of them to charge so much, and it makes it impossible for local people to buy anything at these stores when everything is marked at mzungu prices and tourists coming through won't try to barter. I'm not good at bartering but I hope I'll improve with practice. At this point I usually attempt a couple lower prices and if it's not going well I just leave rather than standing my ground and fighting for it.

*Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey with barbecue sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cabbage salad, rolls, beans (of course), and something meant to be pumpkin pie which was strange and full of small diced pieces of pumpkin, but it still tasted good. So, not your traditional meal (we knew it wouldn't be, with Ugandans catering) but it was delicious. Then a Christian couple who live here in Mbale and are friends of the missionaries renewed their wedding vows after the dinner, which was really sweet. :)

Not so great:
Being harassed while trying to shop... I wish we could just shop in peace, but that's not possible here, it seems.
No hot showers.
RAIN. SO MUCH RAIN. We'll have to see how the roads to Karamoja are tomorrow... who knows, we may be stranded here another day if the roads are impassable. Being stuck here wouldn't be too much of a trial for us :) But it would be difficult for the pastors and there were people here in Mbale who wanted to visit Nakaale for the weekend, so it would be a shame if our visitors missed their chance to come up.

But altogether, this was a good day :)