Greetings From Entebbe!

Greetings from Entebbe, Uganda! Thanks to the connections provided by Mike's work, and the amazing flexibility of Emma's school district, we have the wonderful opportunity to live abroad for the year. This summer we packed up our house, rented it to a wonderful family, and on August 21 we headed to Uganda where Mike's closest colleague and his wonderful family lives. We are so lucky to have the benefit of close friends here. Harriet and Dan, along with their children and relatives, are currently providing us with a place to stay and showing us the ropes of Entebbe.

Mike has laughed that this blog is basically a travel version of my pre-k blog (true true 😂), but I suppose I don't know how to do it any differently! At any rate, we'll all take turns updating this periodically, so feel free to subscribe. We hope that it can help us stay connected with friends at home, and can also teach a bit about life in a small African city. Mike's Uncle Jeff deserves credit for the title of this blog (Life Away from Hot Dog Land), a phrase which we borrowed from one of his recent emails about our time here.

Here we are with Mike's parents, ready to be dropped off at JFK.

Entebbe (pop ~70,000) is right on Lake Victoria, just south of the capital of Kampala. 

Our friends Dan and Harriet are building a hotel on their property, and we're lucky enough to stay in one of the rooms while we look for an apartment. What a wonderful welcome!

Harriet and Dan's back yard is huge! This is one corner, a bar and work space they recently built.

We were also thrilled to meet the many dogs at Harriet and Dan's compound. Their daughter has rescued many street dogs, and they have had a lot of puppies. This one, named Buddy, reminds us of our dog back home. ☺️

Entebbe is an amazing mix of city and country. Dan and Harriet's property abuts a wet area where it's difficult to build, so while one side of their compound is bordered by a busy road, the other side looks like this. 

We visited the zoo on our first day, and watched a monkey steal a Fanta from a little girl. The girl was very upset, but the monkey unscrewed the lid and had a delicious treat! 😂

Lunch at the zoo, right on the banks of Lake Victoria.

Hot and very tired at the zoo - there's a 7 hour time difference and the jet lag hit us hard that first day!

Back at the compound Ada and Iris started to make friends with Harriet and Dan's niece and nephew who also live with them. Joshua and Harriet (the kid) have become great playmates!

More and more and more puppies.

Mike and I have loved taking morning runs to explore the city. This is not far from where we're staying, a beautiful view out into the country. 

While we were out looking for apartments, our driver Mamu took us through the botanical gardens. This is a cannonball tree with incredible smelling flowers, and underneath the tree are giant termite mounds. 

Ada, not impressed by our lakeside "fish and chips" 😂

It's hard to tell, but his bird is HUGE! Maribou storks are apparently great scavengers, and this one was eating chicken bones off the ground near our table. 

We found more monkeys in the botanical gardens. They're not afraid!

Look closely on top of the van. 

Another great lake view from a morning run. There are many bars and restaurants along the lake. 

We went to a huge market on Saturday and were amazed by all the beautiful fruits and vegetables. Look at the size of this avocado! It cost about 30 cents. 😳

Our first Ugandan pizza - the sauce was weirdly really spicy. 

Playing jacks (a gift from my Aunt Bea!) on the steps outside our room. 

More puppy time. This is one of our favorites, named "Coffee Black".

Aaaaand...time for school!

We are staying up near ViaVia Entebbe (you can find it on the map), and the kid's school is about 4 miles away down near the Imperial Beach Hotel. Our friends are currently driving us, and we're working to figure out a more long term solution for transportation. 

We found this school online and enrolled the kids before we left the US. It's a small international school with a Canadian curriculum called "U Can". The first day of school went well! The kids each have one other American in their class, and made some friends. There are many differences from our school in Guilford, all of which Ada and Iris quickly pointed out when they got home! 🙃

This is the school, looking down at it from the top of a small hill. It's right on the edge of Lake Victoria, and close to the zoo and botanical gardens. 

The school day runs from 8:00am to 4:00pm, but despite the long day the kids still had energy to play with Joshua, who was eagerly waiting for them to come home. School doesn't start for Joshua and Harriet until late September. 

We'll see how school goes the rest of this week. There is certainly a lot to get used to in this foreign country, and we're trying to take it slowly. In fact, everything in Uganda moves at a much slower pace than in the US, something that we are very much welcoming right now. We have all experienced various amounts of homesickness and culture shock, but it feels amazing that we've only been here for one week and have already learned so much.