Bad news! I was supposed to meet up with my messiah friends today in the capital, but some girl got an asthma attack and I couldn't get cleared off campus! I'd like to hang her, but whatever.... AS A GOOD NOTE. I just walked to the supermarket to buy some nutella and coconuties ( I've been out for quite some time now!) And I found CINNAMON! for 75 cents! AND THE BEST NEWS EVER: OREOS! for cheaper than in AMERICA????? Oh. and then I asked if I could stay on campus this weekend because It's my big 21 and we wanted to watch the justin bieber movie ! And the coordinator was a jerk and said NO. Which i'm still angry about . HOWEVER. WE just made official plans to raft and bungee jump the nile this weekend.

oreos+nutella+bungee jumping+rafting+ complimentary bbq after? My life is improving a little bit at a time!

peace out. gotta go check the latrine for geckos!!

pictures

the dr sues trees are awsome

cool KID

Class rooms pretty swanky

doing laundry... my fingers bleed, almost work them to the bones

katy and autumn

shes a strange one, katy

night sky!

hillside

noahs ark

joe and kelsy

Last week was my super 'America, help, africa is killling me!' week, so that's my excuse for not updating!

Last weekend My 'things I need to learn in life' List got extended DRASTICALLY.

Saying NO!!:

I assumed that by the time I had been living here for a month things would be a lot easier, but that's not the case! If anyone knows anything about me, they know I'm so bad at saying "NO" . Last weekend I pretty much snapped after being asked for anything from money to my personal belongings. Don't get the wrong idea, "African's" don't all just ask for everything, but last weekend I just so happened to draw the wrong crowd. Each time I was asked for these random things it was super casual and I wasn't sure if they were being serious? How could you just ask for my camera? uh no. I bought it for a reason. My water bottle? Um. yea sure, I'll just drink from my shoe??!!!!!! Although I'm still not really sure what the heck they are thinking???? I'm starting to understand why they think asking for such items is considered 'normal' or acceptable.' After being super offended and angry for a couple days like they just wanted my 'stuff' instead of me? I talked to my younger sister and explained my understanding of the situation to her and by the end I felt a lot better! She's the sweetest thing ever, and has helped me understand more of the culture than I could ever figure out on my own! No guys they don't want all of my stuff.... I guess... i'm still learning... learning not to be frustrated and Learning to say no. And learning to offer grace when I just want to flip out.

Patience: patience . patience.

We speak 'english' they speak 'british english' here, which is a LOT different from American English. 'Stubborn' means extremely wild, silly, and outgoing..... That's just one example. Needless to say communication has been a huge struggle and when I come home from school at night and just want to have quiet alone time, but instead am expected to have long conversations. My brother loves preaching to me and he can talk for 45 minutes straight about how God loves us and after each he asks ' not so?' You are not supposed to answer, but keep listening, and after 45 minutes he finally asks if I agree with what he said? I never have a clue what he said because it could have been wrapped up in ten minutes if it was straight english! I then answer to what I thought he or my teachers say and they disagrees with it. It has been the biggest struggle, whether in class or in daily conversations it is the same and I get so tired from listening and trying to understand the ideas trying to be conveyed. Class has been the biggest struggle to sit through. I need patience.

FUN:

BIGGEST COMPLIMENT OF MY LIFE: An African told me " I like the way you jump!". Wow. I felt like sooooooooooo happy!!!!

Kelsey got told the same day "I like your swag" (I like the way you walk) Best pick up line ever!

Last week we started playing VOLLEYBALl. My volleyball skills are ALMOST as good as my cooking skills! But it is a blast! The first time we played, there was a girl playing in heels and a skirt! Okay? Shopping has been a little more successful! I used to pay $4 for a skirt, but we got some the other day for $1.50! oh yea! That leaves more money for Nutella and coconut cookies! This past Friday we had a ICE CREAM social at the coordinators house, do you know how good ice cream tastes after you haven't had anything cold in 5 weeks? After eating we played a little wiffle ball! Slid in a skirt....Yep. BUT the girls team still lost =/ guess we'll have to have a rematch this weekend!

AFRICAN PLANNING:

Yesterday was the greatest day ever! My family left me home to do my laundry ( Yes my knuckles literally bled) while they went to the 'farm'...glad I got out of that one! A few hours later came back to the house because the family didn't end up going to the farm, instead on the way to the farm they decided to stop at a party and cater it...no big deal just change the entire days plans! SO I got to go to my first African graduation party!!! I didn't get any pics, but i'm sure I'll be at plenty more! Just picture this - two huge white tents filled with extremely dressed up Africans facing the one girl who graduated. In between the two tents was a HUGE CAKE, that was being attacked by like a million children! And then the food line. which consisted of my mom, her friends, me, and my sister all serving food in our little red checkered apron. YEP. talk about a sight! I don't even know how to eat the food here let alone how to serve it! The graduates brother came over to me half way through and asked if I was german? No American, "OH, How is OBAMA?" " the same?" " Oh good, I would like to take you on a date.". Oh of course you would .

ok Someone bought a basketball......aka those papers? That reading? That laundry? ehhhhhhhhh SWISHHHHHHHHHH =]

A super brief update!

On the weekends I have no internet because I am usually home or on a weekend trip, but I just ran up to school bri

So this past week has been a really hard and frustrating week here. Africa definitely has it's ups and downs! Thanks everyone for your funny stories and encouragement yesterday! I really appreciate it. Things

Well I probably should update you guys myself so mom doesn't keep updating instead of me, last week we only had internet for two days. It's awesome, I feel like I live in a third world country or something! Life in Africa has been pretty interesting lately. Last week was filled with classes, me procrastinating homework because who wants to do homework when you live in Africa? Don't worry mom, I did most of it =]

Today I went to my practicum for the second time. It's at a ridiculously nice orphanage/children'shome/ school/ housing place. It's pretty much GORGEOUS. I go with two of my friends from school, so it's pretty fun. The children call us 'Antee'... They can't say Hillary so they call me Hannah, or CAlorie???? Yep. .Apparently we can bring camera's so by next week there will be a kajillion pictures of me and the most precious little snotty nosed kids ever! They alll speak english too which is a plus! They are anywhere from 2 weeks old to 10 years old so it's great!

This past weekend I went to Kampala the big city with 3 other kids. Kelsey (see pictures) and I were meeting Joe and Michael( Also pictured below I believe for those who need a visual) Kels and I grabbed a taxi- aka a small 4 wheel drive van that has about 16 other people crammed into it...smells awesome. Got to Kampala and it immediatly started raining and people were running at us from all sides with sunglasses trying to sell them for about 10 bucks each...we just kept walking past and by the time we had walked about fifteen feet they lowered the price to 1.50 so naturally we bought a couple pairs =] Then got pizza, which was the most amazing experience i've had in a month=] . We all decided to try and buy soccer jersey's, and you have to barter for everything you buy here, so it was obviously an exciting experience. While we were getting the last jersey a guy brushed past kelsey and I and before I knew it Joe walked into the shop after the guy and came back with Kelsey's sunglasses in his hand where he had just pit pocketed the guy who brushed us and apparently had grabbed kelsey's brand new shades!

ok thats all I have to say =]

pictures II

collage canteen. 30 cent sodas

neighbor boy phynk. he's adorable

making wicked good waffles!

and the 55 mile and hr rollercoaster

pictures!

my brother david! great kiddo


and david also dances


eating breakfast


jo needed a hair cut after saving us from pick pocketers


Hil Pelk
Got oreos, marshmellows, a legit soccer jersey, and ray bans for $15. Kelsey got PICK POCKETED! but lucky for us Joe pick pocketed him back! oh yea america. =]

lake bonyoni

kelsey and rachel

rachel and I with our coconutties!

AFricana snaps

new pics

this is the 'squatty potty' pose AKA latrine!

VIsion for AFrica- where we went swimming!

my peepss

Rope swing, Rwanda style!! so fly!

My first official post =]

AND NOW A LONG AWAITED UPDATE FROM LITTLE MISS AFRICA/ Mzungu/ MS. CLINTON!( everyone calls me that here =/)/ Hil-PEQUE

here i sit in my little skirt/braided hair/ and dresssyy shoes. Ew. onto the update=]

ADJUSTING:

The initial adjustment of living here seemed easy because first two weeks we were touring Rwanda and didn't really have to adapt to the people and culture around us! Now that I am living with a family and classes started it has been a really hard adjustment. Classes are over an hour and a half long and accessing the internet is way more effort than it is worth. Being at home is my favorite part of the day, but even though I thought my culture shock would come from cockroaches and germs, I'm realizing now how NOT okay I am with just sitting back and taking in what is going on around me. The culture here is all about spending time with each other and just being available. Even if you aren't doing something or talking they love to just be in the presence of each other. Obviously I struggle with sitting still, especially when I'm not doing anything productive, so it has really been testing and hard on my nerves. Dinner should only take an hour to prepare, but the entire afternoon is devoted to cutting and cooking. I'm sure the longer I'm here I'll start to understand why the daily chores are done the way they are, but right now i'm just shocked and confused!

HOME:

Every night during our chores bonding time with my siblings is a blast! My mom was gone all weekend so we got the house to ourselves! I try help cook dinner, but they think I'm a complete idiot so my brother and I do dishes and make up rap songs about our days which is super usually super hilarious ( I'll try to tape it sometime:) After dinner we watch Soap opera's !!! WHAT??? IN AFRICA????? They are spanish, but re dubbed in Luganda, and sometimes the English translation slips through, but not normally, it sounds something like this ;lijewlkjlekjelkj I LOVE you lijklej oiuok blkjlje No you don't ? okjokj hb jkl juhkl .. You get the idea =] Everyone watches the same one's so we get to talk about them the next day at school. It's definitely the best part of the day. =]

Culture shock moment!:

Saturday my sister ( actually a cousin who just moved here and speaks very little english and has never been around anyone white) and I were cleaning the house and I swept off the front porch and then asked her if she wanted me to 'mop it' ( with a rag, because they don't have mops), she replied ' no you whites can't bend over?' WHAT? She literally thought white people can't bend over and do work. Well obviously we all know I have quite a temper so that made me SO mad!!! What the heck does she think i'm a lazy white girl and I can't cook!!!! I had all I could do not to slap her, but then I realized in Africa there is no reason to have a mop because the areas they 'mop' are really small compared the area we mop so it makes sense that they just wipe it up and that we have an actual mop. So I just calmly ( by the grace of God), said ' oh we can bend over annette we just do things differently!' Needless to say I have to write a paper about a shocking moment.....I think that takes the cake so far!!!!

Funn:

Last night my sister's decided to braid my hair, neither of them had ever braided white hair- how do you think it looks???? yea.....interesting! They love it and said they can't wait until next weekend to do it again! AH. I guess I have to keep it in for a couple days so I don't offend them =] It's okay Africa is no beauty pageant.

BED BUGS.

Well approximately two hours of my day yesterday was spent 'ironing' my Entire wardrobe, I think it looks a little better? I'd say I'm DEFINItely the worst ironer on this continent! Today I got the confirmation that all of the VERY ICHY/BURNING/Swollen bug bites ALL over my poor little while body are indead bed bugs....which means- I get a new mattress! and...I have to rewash ALL of my clothes! By hand! And I get to re-iron ALL of my clothes! =/ AHHHh.

quick pics

JOE and CORA

there are wayyyyyyy to many of these around

cute little africa

and ME

all us americans!

first update

This is really hard to wrap all up because it’s been like 16 days and this is the first email, I’ll try to get more emails so I don’t have to give you all the random details.. .

Day one of Rwanda= get in the coaster ( A bus, but literally rides like a rollercoaster because some of the roads are dirt like camp roads but we still drive 50 mph!!!)….they sway and drive and ahhhh death! Anyway. We drove 14 hours and got food along the way…no way to sleep because of the terrible roads… it was kind of long and awful. But then we got to Rwanda boarder…changed over and stuff,,,,, it’s so much easier than in AMERICA. Pathetic really. Well they changed my money and the stupid @#$#$^$%^& jipped us hard core. Which kind of makes me angry, but whatever we treid to do our best. Then we stayed in kibule I believe at a catholic ‘guest’ house.. really nice place but all 30 girls stayed in one big room with bunk beds. When we first got there it was around 7pm…which is the second TEA TIME of the day =] each TEA time we get like a pastry and toast and tea =] its everyone’s favorite part of the day for sure . then we ate dinner later….every time we eat dinner it is the same . chips (potato / fries/ ) cooked cabbage ( like cooked cole slaw), rice, beans, creepy gross meat! And Matoche ( which is mashed plantane ( banana) , but tastes like dried gross potato..its not that bad but I’m sick of it for sure!!!! Then we get soda and passionfruit and tomato fruit for dessert! I eat like 13 passion fruit a night when we could because it was soooooo much better than anything else. I’ll probably have so many cavaties because the water is SO GROSS tasting and I just drink soda when I can =] I honestly don’t remember what we did …the schedule for the ten days. .. we stayed in each place for two nights , which meant we never got used to the beds, and I’ve only had a pillow three nights since I’ve been here. And only two hot showers =] and only four actual showers =] the rest I take with like a bucket….and dump water over myself and wash and la la la . . . its really interesting =]

Day 2 – we had a service day?- that means we broke into groups and went and my group went to this schoool on a big hill and picked rocks up from the ‘field’ ( Huge Hill) and lugged them up the hill and put
them in a huge pile. They are later smashed up and made into a foundation for the school I heard. We did that for 3 hours then went back to the place we were staying, had soda to ‘wipe the dust from our chins’ and talked about it. The rest of the day we relaxed and watched a movie called the ‘ghost of rwanda’ about the genocide.. it was really graphic and informational. The next days we just went to different memorials and listened to people talk about all the horrible stuff that happened. Basically 1 million Rwandans died by the hands of their neighbors machetes… they had all gotten along really well, but the hutu’s who owned land were mad at the tutsi’s who owned animals and jealous rages started and the whole country broke into a fight and 1 million of the tutsis were killed by their best friends… we talked to a murderer who actually killed his best friend who he drank beer with and stuff, and he told us how he reconciled after like 15 years with his best friends daughtere. It was crazy. She was there too… it was at this program called ‘carsa’ . . . … . anyway we went to churches. The blood still all over the walls. The clothes all over the pews. Holes in the ceilings and walls from grenades and bullets. And there were dents in the walls where they literally took the children by their feet and smashed them to death off the walls. That was the most depressing part. It was kind of awful..but not like the holocaust museum…for some reason that was worse?

we finally went to LAKE buyoni in UGANda , on bushara island? I believe… we took super cool wood dug out boats all across this huge lake and stayed on this island. All the nights we were away we got to choose who we stayed with … I stayed with Katie, =] we stayed in a dorm type room, but some people stayed in tents and tree houses, and cabins, I’ll try to look up the site so you can see! IT was so pretty and wicked cool. It was our debrief so we just got to swim and there was a HUGE rope swing!!!! Sooo great ! There will probably be pictures….my camera was dead by then , but tons of other people were taking pictures so we had this huge rope swing and the main building on the island ( it was only our group of 50 there ) was a HUGE hut, theat is where we ate and hung out and had fires and stuff and played card games. La la la .

the second day we got to go on canoe tours to another island and hike a huge hill. Because EVERYWHERE here are HUGEEEE HILLs it’s really really really pretty , like really pretty! The people are in all these valleys and are working so hard and then the children just SCREAM MUZUNGOOO MUZUNGOO when we go driving by =] that means white person =] I love that fact that just because I’m white makes a child so happy, but then at the same time I hate being treated like royalty. But then they just try to make us pay for stuff because we are white and rich =] . anyway the island- so it was soooooo much fun! Hanging out and relaxing and rope swinging . MY room there- OKAY. So Katie and I are both Imme ( which is what it means when you live off of campus with a family) and we are both chickens and scared of everything, so we had to sleep in the same bed under a mosquito net so that the bats in our CEILING couldn’t come eat us alive!! AHHH they just kept squeaking and squeaking and yelling and ahhhhhhhhhh hahahhahah it was hilarious… but so scary! =]

The second night we decided that it would be a great idea to go skinny dipping.. six of us decided to go me Katie, Kelsey (and then three other hilarious girls.. welll we jumped in and were washing our hair and then heard someone else jump in the water. .. . . so naturally we were sooooo angry and freaked out at him and We don’t know if he left or what, but I don’t think he got that we were skinny dipping ( because there isn’t really swimming in Africa . . that’s the best case scenario tho…anyway he was in his swim ssuit – we think…..but HES BLACK SO we couldn’t see him!!!!!! So we were angry and grabbed our towels and got up on the dock and left , .. BUT we found his sweater and clothes in a bush so we stole them =] . we’re not giving it back till he asks because we’re so angry at him. Holy cow. They run on ‘african time’ like ten minutes to walk 500 feet!

<--- passion fruit. good

<--- african kids

A few quick pics...

My very first night

On the bus, sick tattoo (fake)

Friends

Im at the equator

oh my lanta ZEBRAS

I left for africa on August 21...

This was her plane food -->

We took hillary to the PWM airport in portland, maine at 2:00 a'clock on August 21, 2011 for her 6 AM flight to JFK in New York. She met her group in JFK and left for South Africa at 11:30. Some fun facts from the trip so far....

*She lost her passport.

*Had some strange meal with a meat with a rather large vien in it.

*Met some great new people.

*Slept in a room with the fire alarm going off all night.

*Met her host family on august 23.