Happy Father's Day!

Usually I have a theme for blogs already thought out before I write one, but I'm having a difficult time today. Hmm....theme of the week? Hey, Emily Mcgee got here. Emily is another intern. She's from Mississippi, has a really cute, fast Southern accent, and is my new roommate. She got here on Monday, so I've spent a lot of the week giving her a kind of orientation/dragging her around town with me. She doesn't mind being dragged.

We found a coffee shop on Wednesday and have already been twice because it's the closest thing here to a cute American coffee shop even though the only special drink is a cappucino. The owner actually asked us (mostly Emily because she has more coffee experiece) to come back and train her workers to make lattes and whatnot in exchange for a free drink. Welcome to Africa.

School's been a bit of a blur. On Wednesday, I read a story to my Nkokunjeru class that led to a discussion on contentment. This led to me saying that the only way to contentment is through God. This led to questions of "What is heaven? What is a soul? Do I have two bodies?" Wow. Ok. So on Friday I went back and read the story of creation and the Fall. I wanted to do the whole gospel, but figured that's a lot for one class period. Well, in the middle of the story, the big scary principal man walked into my class and stayed for the rest of the period. To top that off, my teacher never showed up, apparently she had a burial to go to and didn't warn me about it. Afterwards, he called me to his office and asked me to prepare a lesson plan for him to look at Monday. Here's the thing, though. My job lately has been just to read stories and ask questions, then let the teacher teach and I explained this to him. I'm still not sure what he wants because I don't think he really understood me. On Monday, then, I will prepare a "lesson plan" for a Max Lucado book about children of the king, which should be ok because religion is allowed in the classroom.

On the other hand, I took Emily to her first day at Bible Baptist school on Thursday and she had fun. We ended up subbing for a sick teacher and did a lesson on Ugandan Social Studies (which, obviously, we are clueless about). Then we played Simon Says and sang a Bible song. There's also a mzungu guy who just started volunteering there and when he saw us he acted as if he hadn't seen a woman in years. He was a little...um...weird and...creepy...

I feel like I've seen Crystal and the boys a lot this week. On Tuesday, I made chili for their dinner (my cooking/kitchen survival skills are much improving). Their housekeeper watched over my shoulder the whole time, and she doesn't speak much English, so I had a nice awkward time. I kept sending my mother mental messages: thank you for teaching me how to brown meat, thank you for teaching me how to brown meat....

I saw Alice in Wonderland for the first time this week. It was a bootlegged copy and we watched it with female university students who had never seen a real American movie before. That was quite an experience.

Happy Father's Day. We made cards for "Daddy Dale" Hollenbeck and I got to call my parents for the first time since I've been here. I do miss them just a smidge--but I think I may miss McDonald's more.

Now I'm going to publish this and get off so that Joel can get on and read it--even though I'm at his house right now. Thank the Lord for the wonderfully entertaining missionary team he put here. Have fun, Joel.