I'm here!

Not a ton of time to write because they are only giving us a little time to let everyone know we got here safe. Also, the space bar is sticky so if some words dont have spaces in between them, I apologize. Uganda is BEAUTIFUL. Everything is so green and I am soooo warm. Definitely not missing the St. Louis winter. The drive from the airport to the city was fascinating. There are so many things to see-it was pretty overwhelming. One of my favorite things was that in front of a bunch of houses there were signs that said "land is not for sale." I was wondering if it was a political/ environmental statement or literally referring to that particular land and someone told me it is referring to that particular land to ward off con men... Interesting... We also drove through a bit of the slum and was told that the majority of the people there are Somali refugees.

We're in a hotel for the first week and its actually nicer than I was prepared for. The mosquito nets are a little intimidating, but I guess I'd rather they were there than not. I'm super tired cuz I havent gotten a decent night's sleep since I left Charlotte.

Last night we (me + 3 others on my program) had a 12 hour layover in Dubai. Turns out they are not at all strict about who they let into the UAE so the airline paid for us to stay in a hotel outside of security. They had a midnight tour and none of us were very tired so we decided to spend the night touring Dubai instead of sleeping. Even though it made me exhausted now it was definitely worth it. We spent 2 hours driving around looking at the palaces, that realllllly tall building (forget the name), and Palm Island, and dipping our feet into the Arabian Sea. Interesting way to start this adventure since Dubai was a desert 25 years ago... Very different from Uganda. Everything is so clean and ostentatious. It really reminded me of a fake city from a movie, or like somebody had decided to build a real life SIM City. The tour guide said that gas is $1 /gallon and nobody pays taxes. I guess living on top of oil really pays off...

Hokay. That's all for now. My cell phone isn't working despite hours ahead of time talking to verizon so I dont know the next time I can update but when I get a chance I will.

Hope everything is going well in the good ole USA:-)