"Nice and Cool"

This morning when we woke up, Sharon commented that it is so "nice and cool" in our room. I vehemently disagreed, "it's hot and muggy!" I pointed out that May in Boston will often get into the 70's or even 80's during the day, but the mornings are still cool sweatshirt weather. She mused thats why there are places like New England - for people like me who like it brisk in the morning. We then proceeded to look at the temperature - 26 degrees at 8 in the morning. After my convenient cell phone converter told us what temperature that is in farenheit - 79 degrees, she agreed perhaps it wasn't so cool afterall. However, to her credit, this morning was much, much cooler than the middle of the day yesterday waiting for public transit (called taxis) to get to Kampala.

We have been staying at a lovely lodge about halfway between Entebbe - where the airport is, and Kampala - the capital of Uganda. Yesterday, we learned that Jonah and his daughter would be driving into Kampala tonight to stay with us and shop for materials for the trainings before we all head up to Masindi together on Friday. With 5 of us staying instead of 3, we decided that today we will move to a less expensive hostel which is closer to the city. We stopped by Red Chilli yesterday, and it seems like a very different atmosphere - more of a backpacker's hostel with lots of young people moving around and hanging out. We will be headed over there later this morning.

view down the road from our Lodge in Lweza

Our trip is going well so far, and we have enjoyed meeting family friends of the Phelps', but we have also been plagued by airplane troubles and missed connections; all of my flights were delayed, including 3 hours on the tarmac in Rwanda because of a damaged cargo door, but luckily it only thing it affected was the amount of sleep I got. Sharon was unable to make her connecting flight in Brussels, and arrived Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday night, sans luggage (we are hoping it arrives on tonight's flight), and after checking on the flight status, it seems that a long delay caused by bad weather in DC and the volvanic ash cloud will cause Erika to miss her flight as well. We are hoping that means she will only be bumped to the flight that gets in tomorrow morning. Still, it means a long 2.5 days of traveling for her, followed by a 4 hour trip by public transit to Masindi.