"You are very important to me"

The Wrights and Ericka have been down country for over a week, so I've been enjoying a breezy teaching schedule and lots of downtime. I spent most of my time reading, hanging out with Leah Hopp in the evenings, and putzing around on the internet (since the middle compound, where I live, has been home to only three people instead of ten, we've had tons of power! My poor old Grove City laptop has 30 minutes of battery life, so it's wonderful to be able to plug it in all the time!).

Leah had a birthday last Friday, so we had tortillas and hummus and watched tons of episodes of the Cosby Show... oh the 80s. Gotta love the outfits :)

The kids Bible study on Monday went very well. Leah came with me this time. I taught them the parable of the lost sheep. Only 25 kids came (instead of forty, as we'd had the week before) which, I admit, I was thankful for, because a group of forty kids is hard to control. I brought along a big jump rope. Some of the older girls were pretty good and they had three kids jumping at once. I think it was a hit. 

This morning Ruffin (a 19 year old visitor who's been here for 6 months), Jamie Tricarico, Jim and Jenny Knox and I were on the road at 6:15am to visit the Pian Upe Game Preserve, which is just a little ways south of the market town of Namalu. We went on a mini-safari :) We arrived and the guide brought us into his office. "If you are lucky, you will see some animals... if you are lucky, you will see some animals... if you are lucky... you will see... some animals..." He was a very funny man... he said "for-ay-nee" instead of foreign and repeated himself a lot. Jim had to sign the guestbook because "you are very important to me." 

Jamie, Ruffin and I climbed up on the roof rack of Jim's SUV (easier said than done for a shorty like me!), and our guide plus a ranger (complete with AK-47s) sat in the back seat. The sun was just rising as we set off on the three hour drive through the bush. It was terribly uncomfortable sitting on the metal bars of the roof rack, but after a while I didn't notice it so much. The view of Mount Kadam was breathtaking... I'll post pictures soon. Unfortunately, we didn't see too much wildlife, but we saw tons of cobs (a type of antelope) who run SO fast... they were outrunning our car. It felt like we were in the middle of a National Geographic film. We also saw Jackson's hardebeasts, which are huge antelope-type things with big horns. We also saw a very large, very fast rodent thing and some guinea fowl and other neat birds. No cheetah, ostriches, leopards or baboons... but the view alone was worth the trip. That was my first time riding on the roof of any  vehicle ever... and it was so much fun :P

I think I got a bit of heat stroke/sun stroke cuz when I got back I crashed in bed and slept for two hours. I'm still feeling exhausted and dehydrated but it's all good. I'm just chugging water like it's my job. Tonight we have a group dinner, and it will be Ruffin's last before he goes home, so I have to make an epic dessert :)

In other news, Bob Wright cut his arm badly earlier this week, and yesterday morning he had surgery which successfully reconnected a nerve and two tendons. Poor Bob :( His arm is in a cast and he can't use it for six weeks, so the Wrights and Erika are coming back from Kampala a week early, along with Bob's sister and her son Justin, who are here for a visit.