Well it's about time I updated this and fill you in on the last couple of weeks. Last weekend I had my housewarming party. We decided to have an Oscar night theme, so dressed the house up with a red carpet (made out of crepe paper), lots of sparkly stars and candles throughout. Everyone got very dressed up and even wore heels, which is a bit of a rarity here, considering the state of the roads with all the potholes and lack of tarmac and the like.
School is going on ok, but still has been full of dramas. The kids are still great - they are all very good at English (many native speakers and the ESL ones are fluent - no more 'miss, he is molesting me' or 'it is that I need to go to the bathroom'! The admin, however, is a bit of a shambles. The woman in the bursar's office is so off the rails that she makes the head of hr from my last job look like Mother Theresa. We are all a wee bit concerned that a couple of weeks ago, the bursar did a midnight shift a flew the country back to India, leaving the office and his house in a real mess (and for the house I am talking total devastation - dirty plates of food left around being attacked by maggots, clothes everywhere and loads of old furniture all over the place.

Sunday

Today I’m feeling a little dazed and sun stroked. This morning I got up early to take a walk up to the Bahai Temple up the road. I can see it from my room and it’s a big landmark in Kampala. The religion is a bit of a mixture of all different world religions and there’s just one temple on each continent, so I thought it would be rude not to bother to go up there and see. To be honest, it looks much better from a distance, it’s just very simple inside. The gardens surrounding it are very pretty and it’s a lovely and peaceful place to visit. Unfortunately my new walking shoes rubbed my feet and am now suffering from massive blisters and am not sure whether I’ll be able to make the running hash tomorrow.

This afternoon, for the first time since getting here, I had time to go down to the pool and lay out in the sun. It’s brilliant to have the free membership to the club – I’m swimming a lot after school, going to the gym and also have had a few tennis lessons. The only downside is that most of the families from school are also members, so as I walked in today I could hear 3 little voices yelling ‘Miss Crosbie’ – aaaahhhh teacher’s nightmare to be relaxing by the pool in a bikini, only to be greeted by your kids charging round and throwing each other in the pool!

Last night my friend had a barbeque on her outside terrace. I think we girls can be very proud of ourselves for successfully cooking everything on the bbq with no male assistance whatsoever.

Now for a little bit about the next drama in school. On Friday we were called into the staffroom for (yet another) emergency meeting. This week’s big shocker is that the principal has resigned, probably with immediate effect. Whether he jumped or was pushed is another issue, so watch this space for what happens next. So now we have no principal, but they have managed to replace the bursar (who made a midnight dash back to India about 2 weeks ago), so hopefully we should get paid this month.

My group of friends and I have now firmly established Friday night as restaurant night. Each week we’re trying somewhere new. There are loads of great restaurants here, all with really good food. We went to the Turkish this week, which is lovely because there are lots of comfy sofas to relax on and it’s all outdoors in a park. We’ve also tried out the Thai, the Belgian, various Indians – we think Mexican may be the next on the cards.

Now I wonder if anybody can figure out his little conundrum for me – my friends and I have tried, but we are no closer to reaching an understanding. When you want to buy soft drinks here, they come in the returnable bottles – all well and good so far I hear you say. However, when you try to buy one in the shop, they won’t allow you to buy it unless you have a bottle to return. Nor will they let you put down a deposit. So if any of you can think of a solution – answers on a postcard to …

White Water rafting on the Nile

Today I am a little sore around the arms, a bit bruised and battered and have 2 very sun burnt knees because my suncream clearly wasn't as waterproof as it was supposed to be. Well I thought I had been rafting in Colombia - but this is nothing compared to yesterday's adventure. We set off to Jinja, which is the source of the Nile to go on a whole day rafting. Apparently it is in the top 3 places to do white water rafting in the world and I can see why. It's such a shame that they are building a dam right now, so it will come to the end and make a huge eyesore as well. So there were 5 of us and we felt very sorry for the poor Swedish bloke who got stuck in a boat with us weaklings who were too weak to drag ourselves back into the boat when were tipped out and spent the whole day hauling us lot in!! We went through full on grade 4 and 5 rapids, we were tipped and thrown in every direction. At one point I got thrown out, I lost the boat and was hurtling downstream the Nile at full pelt - next stop Egypt I thought!! I struggled to understand the Kiwi instructor as I wondered what I was supposed to lift until I realised he actually meant left. The scenery was totally stunning - the river is so vast and all you can see is trees, hills, an immense blue sky and all the wildlife. We saw massive lizards, eagles flying over us and loads of different birds I'd never seen before. There were points where we just floated down and it was so tranquil. Then the guy in the rescue boat, who must've been incredibly strong, rowed all 4 boats for about half an hour, so we just lay back and basked in the sun. I think the other people in the boat must've been a bit worried about the future of the kids we're educating. Kelly made a few classic quotes - especially when she said the the instructor 'Have you done this before?' errr we hoped so (think she actually meant which other places, but never mind) and 'What does sugar cane taste like?' errrr probably sugar love - what do you think? So you will be glad to know that I am no longer the dizziest blond. I slept very well last night, being totally exhausted from the day.

School has started now and the kids have been in for 3 days now. All I can say about my class is WOW, WOW, WOW!!! Am wondering to myself when they are going to stop being so polite, articulate, helpful and nice and start behaving like normal kids and start knocking seven bells out of each other and so on. Feel like am on one of those training videos they show you when you're training to teach and the kids come out with all the right answers and nobody starts messing about or anything - very strange. I gave my top reading group books just a bit higher than my top kids in Colombia had at the end of the year - only to discover they read them 2 years ago - whoops! We are having a bit of a nightmare with the planning and paperwork though and spending very long days in school. Apparently last year there were 4 different people teaching in the year group - including an American who just got up in the middle of the night once and left the country - it's all a bit of a mystery. Also, there is a ridiculous procedure for getting hold of any resources where you have to sign things out - and there is about a 4 minute window for that each day, otherwise you're screwed.
I don't know if any of you heard but there is an old king of Jinja who died last week, so we have a national day of mourning on Monday - otherwise known as a public holiday - hooray!!!! So to treat ourselves, a group of us are heading to Jinja tomorrow to the source of the Nile to go white water rafting - yayyyyy!!!!! I can't wait.