Horseback Riding and Hokie Football… or How We Spent Our Time in Mongolia

After the long train ride and even

Guess which one is enlightened

longer border crossing in Russia(where Erin and I toasted our stay in Russia with a swig of cheap vodka) we got to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  UB, as the locals refer to it, is a strange place. It is by far the largest city in the country, but it still isn’t that big. The center of town looks sort of modern with tall buildings, a few museums, and a ton of construction going on, but the town is surrounded by “ger districts” on all sides. Gers are the traditional Mongol homes designed for a nomadic lifestyle that can be put up and pulled down in a few hours. These ger districts are full of extremely poor people and are basically slums. More on these later…

Our train arrived around 5 or so in the morning, and Erin and I set off to walk to our hostel (because the car that was supposed to pick us up wasn’t there) with about 10 or so other people who we met either on the train or in Ulan Ude, Russia that were also staying at our hostel. After a good hour long trail of tears, we finally made it. We had three days in the UB to explore and hang before our trip to the Mongolian country side. We spent this time checking out the National Museum of Mongolia (which had a pretty sweet Genghis Khan exhibit), Buddha Park (a park with a huge Buddha and sweet view point overlooking the city), a few Buddhist temples, and just walking around the city. The highlight of my time in Ulan Bator, however, occurred around two in the morning the Friday night we were there. I had pretty much come to terms with missing the 2011 college football season… that is until 2 days before the season started and I shelled out a hundred bucks and ordered a slingbox to my parent’s house. After my pops set it up the night before the game, I was in business. The slingbox is a little device you hook up to your TV and as long as you have a computer with an internet connection, you can watch that TV from anywhere. Once the time rolled around I was pretty excited. I had my 2 Tiger beers ready to be cracked and a little package of generic brand Pringles ready to go. While I was waiting around for the game to start I got to talking with a bunch of Australians who were sitting in the lobby of the hostel watching an Australian Rules Football playoff match. We tried to explain to one another the rules and pageantry of each other’s game. I’m pretty sure we walked away from each other confident that our own game was superior.

Again, guess which one is enlightened...

Following our few days in UB, Erin and I took a 4 day trip to the Mongolian countryside. The area we were staying was in the mountain steppe on the border of the Gobi Desert. We took a bus from UB to a remote village about 7 hours away where we met the brother a sister who would also be in our group. From here, a car picked us up and drove us another hour to the ger of the first family we would be staying with. The organization we booked our trip with was called Ger to Ger, and they offer trips all over Mongolia where you stay with families to see how nomads live and learn about their culture and lifestyle. We would be sleeping in the spare ger set up next door to the ger where the family would be sleeping. In all we would be staying with 3 separate families on our trip. Each family had literally hundreds of animals which they took care of and basically lived off of. They would have horses, cows, sheep, and goats. Being nomads, the families we stayed with didn’t really farm, so they lived primarily off of meat and dairy produced by their animals, which meant, not surprisingly, that’s what we would live off of for the next four days. We were treated to homemade noodles, rice, beef, horse meat, some sort of mystery meat which may or may not have been marmot (luckily we didn’t catch the bubonic plague which many unlucky wild Mongolian marmots suffer from), rock hard cheeses (these were mixed in with cookies, and unlucky cookie grabbers were in for a sour surprise), salted milk tea (the word tea could pretty much be omitted from the title of the drink, it was basically a cup of milk with 2 spoons of salt mixed in),

Erin playing with ankle bones

and fermented mare’s milk (that’s right, alcoholic milk from a horse). While definitely not the best cuisine, most of the food tasted much better than it sounds… although the rest was pretty much on par with what you would think. In our spare time with the families we would go for camel or horseback rides to local sites (we saw a holy Buddhist rock formation, a huge sand dune and lake, a secluded temple on top of a mountain, and a fake tombstone that was built for a movie about Mongolia that was filmed nearby), hike around, play with the kids in the families (they taught us a game where you roll handfuls of goat ankle bones, flick then at each other, and then collect the ones you hit… kind of like a slightly more morbid marbles), help the families with chores (I had to help an old man saw up firewood… which was nice because the other two families just used dried animal poop to heat/cook everything), or try to communicate with the adults in the families. Communicating was always fun as it seemed as though they knew about as much English as we did Mongolian. Luckily the company had provided us with a mini phrase book, so we were able to tell them our names and occupations and ask them how their summer was going. Beyond that, we stuck to hand motions and head nods. Every now and then someone would come over and grab the phrase

Pre-fall

book with an excited look on their face, but after flipping through it and not finding what they wanted to tell us would just sort of shrug and go on with what they were doing previously.  Horseback riding with them was a blast, although their idea of teach you to ride a horse was to help you on to it, smack the horse on the ass, and letting you figure it out for yourself. There was one incident while we were riding horses from the second family’s ger to the third family’s ger. We were about half way there when we got to a super sand dried up river bed. Erin’s horse was dodling behind everyone (see how I blamed it on the horse… that’s marriage for you) so I was kind of goofing around and staying back with Erin then having the horse gallop up to everyone else, then turning around and going back to Erin. Well I guess at one point mid gallop the horse lost his footing in the deepish sand and went down, supermanning me over the top. Both the horse and I popped right back up, me laughing, both of us ok. I guess that although the sand caused the spill, it probably saved me from getting anything hurt, save my pride. It took a trip to Mongolia for me to say that I’ve literally fallen off the horse, and hopped right back on.

After the 4 days with the

Erin the Cowgirl

families we returned to UB. We had one day before our train to China, and Erin found an organization which would let us volunteer for a day. The organization was run by a husband and wife who were from Chicago, and the goal was to help the ultra-poor in the ger districts of Ulan Bator. The husband and wife had moved from their nice home in the Chicago suburbs to live with their 3 kids (18, 16, and 10) in the slums of UB. We got a chance to talk to all of them and the whole family was awesome. We participated in a full day “poverty workshop” with about 15 other volunteers where we helped deliver clean water to families, learned about the dire situation much of the families in the ger district faced, and participated in a brainstorming discussion session where ideas could be exchanged to improve the organization and come up with new ideas. The whole experience was fascinating and seeing how people lived in this part of the city was eye-opening.

Next up Beijing!!!

 

Sleeping on Benches and Underwear Saunas in Siberia

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but this time it isn’t entirely my fault. Apparently the Chinese not only block Facebook and filter Google, but also block WordPress, so I couldn’t post anything new while we were there.  Here is all the info about the rest of our time in Russia and expect posts about Mongolia and a few (possibly) about China in the next few days.

We left Nizhny Novgorod by train to Novosibirsk. This was the first long train ride on our Trans-Siberian adventure. We took a third class cabin and were in two beds above two old Russian women who didn’t speak a lick of English. Next to us was a young couple with a 2 year old daughter who also didn’t speak any English. We were a little leery going in about how this would go, but it turned out to be awesome. The old women were these little babushkas and totally what you would picture when thinking of an old Russian woman. They brought a ton of home cooked food with them and wouldn’t take no for an answer when they would offer it to us. They gave us these meatballs and potatoes and we shared cookies with them. Despite the language barrier, we still tried to talk with them. We’re pretty sure we got it across that we were married and enjoyed Russia. They made it very clear that we needed to have babies as soon as possible and every time Erin stood up they would rub her belly. Must be a Russian thing? The daughter of the other couple next to us was hilarious and constantly running up and down the aisle. She hadn’t quite acquired her train legs yet though, so anytime there was a big bounce or a sudden jerk she would go flying. Apparently she didn’t find it as amusing as I did.

Once we got to Novosibirsk, the babushkas gave us big hugs as kissed our cheeks and we were on our way to find the bus station. The plan was to take a bus from Novosibirsk to Tomsk that evening. We had already arranged to stay with a guy through couch surfing (our first attempt at this… I’ll discuss this more later) and, as a backup, reserved a hotel room. The bus didn’t get in until 1am and, as the couch surfing guy had a little kid, we decided it was too late to call him up and walked to the hotel. The hotel was about a mile and a half from the bus station, but we found it no problem. Everything seemed to be going our way! When we get into the lobby of the hotel this huge guy behind the desk just starts making big X’s with his arms when we ask for a room. He calls this other lady who was apparently supposed to speak English down to assist, but she must not have enjoyed being woken up because she was less than helpful (read: she really sucked). We tried to explain that we had emailed back and forth with someone who worked there and had a room reserved. Erin showed the lady her email address. The lady looked at the computer for what couldn’t have been longer than 3 seconds and just shook her head. We then asked if we could use the phone to try and call some other places. You would have thought we had asked for their first born by the way this lady vehemently refused our request. Well, so much for our plan/backup plan. Luckily, I had remembered where a guy we had met in Suzdal told us he was staying. It wasn’t on our map, but I was fairly certain we could find it. It was about another mile and a half away, but at this point we really didn’t have any other options (our bags were starting to get heavy though). We finally roll up to this other hostel (which we were able to find through dumb luck), but no one answered the buzzer (we later found out they don’t staff anyone there past 9pm). So, it was about 2:30 in the morning, we had just taken a 45 hour train ride followed by a 6 hour bus ride, 3 seemingly solid alternatives had fallen through, and we were completely out of options. Outside this last hostel was a little park with some benches. After talking it over we walked over to them and Erin wiped them off (it had been drizzling off and on this entire time). The plan was Erin would get about 3 hours of sleep on the bench while I listened to my iPod until the sun came up and then we’d figure something out. We took our bags off, sat on the benches, and after about 10 seconds both came to the conclusion that we couldn’t do it. We threw our bags back on and decided to walk the 3 or so miles back to the train station and sleep in there (hopefully). After walking for about 5 minutes or so a car pulls up next to us. All I could think was, “Great, what now.” The driver was a guy a little younger than us who was speaking pretty quickly in Russian. I just told him that I didn’t speak Russian while I continued to walk. Then in semi-broken English he says, “Are you lost, do you need help?” We asked him if he knew of any hostels or cheap hotels close by and he was said we should get in and he would take us to one. Erin and I looked at each other kind of shrugged our shoulders and through our crap in the back seat. Probably not the wisest move but at that point what else bad could happen right? Turned out the kid was a senior at the local university and was on his way home from work. He said we didn’t look like locals (probably because of the huge bags on our backs, because I’m sure the scowls on our faces fit in pretty well). We kept thanking him for helping us and he kept saying it was his pleasure and that it was very interesting for him to meet foreigners. He took us to one of the hotels that was close by and in our Lonely Planet, but it was like 500 bucks a night and he was like, “I know of a cheaper place”, so we pile back into his car and drive to a different hotel. This one looked even nicer than the first one, but because it was already like 3:30 in the morning the lady at the desk said she wouldn’t charge us for that night just the following night (she just kind of treated it as an early check in). We again thanked the guy that picked us up, and headed into our awesome hotel room. It definitely was a lot better than spending the night on the bench and, with the free night, turned out to be about the same price as the hostel that turned us away. It’s cool how over the span of about 2 hours or so we were able to meet two totally different types of people, the asses at the first hostel and the guy willing to take an hour of his own time in the middle of the night to help two foreign strangers. It really will make me think twice before just passing people staring blankly at a map in DC (although my knowledge of DC isn’t probably much better, but if I run into any lost travelers in Burke or Centreville I can point them in the right direction).

After sleeping for a few hours we woke up and checked out Tomsk… in the daylight. Tomsk is known for its old wooden houses, so we spent most of the day walking around admiring the architecture and hunting down the most well preserved of these beauties. Like most of the cities in Russia we have been in to this point, there were also a number of gorgeous churches that we checked out. One cool thing about traveling this time around is we are running into a number of other travelers that we are able to chat with and are either taking a similar route as we are or are doing the Trans-Siberian from Beijing. We are running into the same people as we make different stops which is fun to share stories (the near bench sleeping experience usually gets a few laughs), and we are able to get some good info and tips for future stops from the people traveling in the opposite direction. One guy we met in Suzdal, Tom, we met randomly in a coffee shop here in Tomsk, and it was great to catch up with him and learn about his future plans and get some tips based on his research on where to stay in the next few towns we’ll be in (saves us from doing extra internet research).

The next day we woke up early to catch a bus back to Novosibirsk. Due to a scheduling hiccup, we had a night in Novosibirsk before our next train ride. There really were no cheap hotel/hostel options in town, so Erin brought up trying out couch surfing. She has had a few friends try it out with always good results. It always seemed like a pretty sketchy thing to try (for those of you who don’t know, couch surfing is a way to find a place to stay in a given city. People login to couchsurfing.com and find people hosting couches or guestrooms for you to crash in for free… they just may or may not be a psycho), but I was willing to give it a shot… everything I’ve ever heard about Russia is that all of its people are stable and completely above board, right?  We ended up finding a French guy living in town who was willing to host us. After meeting up with him at a coffee shop next to his apartment he walked us over to his place and gave us a beer while we just sat around and talked. Then he made us a really good quiche dinner. Afterwards, he showed us some of the pictures he had taken in the cities we’ll be heading to next. Before we went to bed we told him that our train the next day wasn’t until the afternoon, but to just let us know what time he had to go to work so we could be out of there and not make him late. He told us that we could just sleep as late as we wanted, gave us a key, and told us to just lock up when he left. Couch surfers are a different breed (I wouldn’t give the key to my apartment to Oleszek, and I’ve known that joker since 9^th grade), but it ended up working out really nicely. In the morning we walked to a dammed up lake nearby then caught our train in the afternoon.

Our next train ride was about 18 hours on the way to Krasnoyarsk. Forthis ride we were in the two top bunks above a couple with a 4 year old boy. This kid was constantly moving about a mile a minute. He was really funny though and the parents were super nice. Again, no English, but we were able to use broken sign language enough to get the point across when needed. I can’t tell you how many times so far in Russia someone will go on for about 20 seconds in superfast Russian, I’ll just put on an awkward smile and sort of shrug my shoulders, they’ll point to something, I’ll say “Oh, you just want X”, they’ll sort of shrug their shoulders, I’ll hand them X and from then on out they’ll assume I understand Russian. The train ride went by pretty quickly. Most of the time Erin and I will either be listening to our iPods, reading, or doing Sudoku races. Right before we left Erin bought 2 of the same Difficult Sudoku puzzle books. We’ll start a puzzle at the same time and it’s a race to see who can finish first (marriage is pretty glamorous, no?). She talked up a pretty big game about how we’d probably only get through a few before I got bitter with losing and quick… let’s just say as of now (mid-October), Erin’s win percentage is just a shade under 20%. I don’t know what’s sadder, that winning percentage, or the fact that I’m bragging about beating my wife at Sudoku… via a blog.

We had such a good experience couch surfing we thought we roll the dice try it again in Krasnoyarsk. Our train got in really early, but the girl we were staying with met us at the train station and took us back to her place. She had to go to work but gave us a key told us to sleep for a few hours and shed meet us that night for dinner. After sleeping until around noon, Erin and I took a bus to the city center (about a 15 minute ride) and walked around to see the sites. While it’s one of the bigger cities in Siberia, Krasnoyarsk didn’t really have a whole not to see downtown. We walked by a few of the churches, saw the Lenin statue, made the obligatory “first down” joke (surprisingly after all of the statues we’ve seen, these are still funny, although I’m sure if Erin were writing this you’d be reading something different), then kind of we left with some time to kill before we had to meet up with our host. We did what any Americans would do in a situation like this, we hit up an Irish bar that was playing a Michael Jackson live concert circa ’91 on TV and had a few pints. We met up with our host at her house around 6pm, and then we ended up taking the bus back to the city for her to show us around. The city was nice in the evening as the streets were all lit up and there were lights on the fountains. The next morning we were planning on hiking around the Stolbi National Park about an hour outside the city. Our host organized to have a friend of a friend show us around the park. At first, Erin and I were a little bummed by this. It was really really nice of her to set it up, but we just kinda wanted to hike around and do our own thing. It turns out the park was about 5-6km away from the bus stop (unmarked of course) and then the park itself was pretty tough to find your way around, so having the guide with us was perfect. Our guide and his girlfriend showed us around the park and showed us how to climb up some of the stolbis (large rock formations) in the park. He even gave Erin a (very basic) lesson in rock climbing. It was a great time. We got back to our host’s apartment kind of late and she had borscht soup made (a Russian staple with veggies and meat in a tomatoy broth). The next morning we woke up early to jump on a train to Irkutsk.

On this train Erin and I had a top and bottom bunk, so it was the first time we didn’t have to sit on a stranger’s bed during the day (we had only both had top bunks to this point). We were next to a French couple who spoke good English and a Russian lady with a 5 year old son. The French couple was pretty cool, and we talked with them for a while on the trip. We got to Irkutsk around 6 the next morning after about an 18 hour ride and immediately jumped on a bus to Olkhon Island in the Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is a huge lake (the deepest lake in the world) that has crystal clear water. The island itself is sort of sparsely habituated, but we stayed in a little town about an hours drive from where we caught the ferry onto the island. The main attraction on the island is the large Shaman’s Rock which is one of the most sacred places in the world according to some Buddhists. We spent 5 days on the island mostly just relaxing. It was awesome. We met a really cool American couple who was near the end of their year long journey who we were able to hang with a lot of the time which was cool. Erin and I spent one day mountain biking (we got lost following a really crappy hand drawn map, so after a good 3 hours of ride up 45 degree inclines in 3 inches of sand… a lot of pushing the bikes during this part, we realized we were going the wrong way… the way down was a lot more fun), and a few days just kind of walking around. The coolest thing we did here were the banyas. A banya is basically a Russian sauna. We found one that was edged right up to the banks of the lake though. The two days we did took banyas the outside temp was in the high 40s to low 50s and the water temp was the same if not colder. The process pretty much involves stripping to your bathing suit (or underwear as it were the first time we did it as we came unprepared), get into the banya which is 150-160 degrees Fahrenheit, sitting in there for 15 or so minutes, then running into the lake to cool off, and repeating 2 more times. These plunges into the water, although the water was so cold, felt really good, and as soon as you got out of the water your core was still so warm that the temperature outside felt great. Once the whole process was done we were soooo relaxed. It was great. After our relaxing few days on the island we caught a bus back to Irkutsk and immediately hopped on a train to Ulan-Ude… our last stop in Russia!

This train ride was pretty short (about 9 hours) through the night, so we pretty much just went to sleep as soon as we got on and didn’t really get a chance to talk to anyone in the morning (we got in again around 6am). We walked to our hostel that morning and took a few hours nap. When we woke up we took a bus to the Ivolginsky Datsun, the most important Buddhist monastery in Russia. The monastery itself had really cool architecture and it was interesting seeing all of the monks walking around in Russia which you pretty much only associate with the Orthodox Church. On the way back to the hostel we had some fun taking pictures with the world’s largest Lenin head… good times. The next morning we woke up early with seemingly the entire hostel to get to the train station for our train to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia!!!

We had a great time in Russia. It was a little hectic due to the strict visa requirements and have to book all of our train tickets ahead of time, but it worked out to be a great beginning to the first leg of our trip. If we were going to do it again, I wish we would have spent more time in Moscow and St. Petersburg and less time in Siberia, but the whole money issue (basically we’re running out) necessitated we only spend a few days there. On to Mongolia!

In Mother Russia, Blog Reads You

Well, let’s just say I’ve been pretty lazy with keeping up with the blog over the last 2 months, but I’ll try to catch you up. After we scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro, we went on a few day safari through 4 national parks in Tanzania (Lake Manyara NP, Serengeti NP, Nogorongoro Crater NP, and Tarangire NP). This was a blast because we were able to see literally hundreds and hundreds of animals, but the “budget safari” definitely lived up to its name as we the door on my side of the SUV would pop open every 5 minutes, we got stuck in a riverbed for a good hour (in the middle of one of the parks with wide animals roaming around… we saw lions like 5 minutes before), and our SUV ran out of gas on the way back home on the last day and the guy had to bum 10 bucks off me for gas. The experience was amazing none the less and Erin and I were able to get a pretty good laugh as this craziness was happening (when we weren’t worried about being eaten). After the safari we took a ferry over to Zanzibar where we hung out on the beach for a week or so. The beaches there were gorgeous, Stone Town (the capital) was really fun, and we were able to meet a bunch of cool travelers to swap stories and just hang out with.

After a few nights in Nairobi, Kenya to catch our flight home we left Africa. Our layover was in Amsterdam and we were able to extend for 5 days to check out that city. Amsterdam was a lot of fun. We rented bikes one day and just rode around checking out the beautiful city, went to the Ij brewery to sample some real good beer, and walked through the red light district so Erin could window shop the prostitutes (only half joking, but this is a quick recap). Finally after 4 and a half months we got home in the middle of July. Our trip home was a blast as well. It was great to get home and see our families and friends. We made quick trips up to Ohio and Buffalo to see as many family members as we could (we hope to see the rest around Christmas), and back in Virginia it was great to catch up with everyone (well not everyone… again we hope to see everyone else around Xmas time).

While we were back home, our plan for the second leg of our trip changed. Before we left in February, our plan for round 2 was to fly to Thailand to teach English and travel around southeast Asia in our spare time and come home around February 2012. After thinking about it at the beach in Zanzibar, we decided that we would rather be home for Christmas this year. Because we would only be gone 4.5 months instead of 6, we really couldn’t find a worthwhile teaching gig in Thailand, so we decided to scrap the whole teaching idea and just travel around until Christmas. We started out thinking about just traveling around SE Asia the whole time, but this seemed like small area for the amount of time so our scope slightly broadened.

Last Tuesday we flew to St. Petersburg, Russia to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Russia and Mongolia and end up in Beijing, China. Along the way we’re going to hop on and off the train to check out various cities for a few days each. After getting to Beijing, the plan is to go travel through China a little bit, but then our plans are kind of up in the air. Right now we’re either thinking of heading to SE Asia from China and working our way through Burma and Bangladesh on our way to India, head to Tibet and Nepal on the way to India, or some hybrid/new idea that we’ll figure out along the way.

So far, our trip has been amazing. We got to St. Petersburg around 11am last Wednesday, and, after catching up on a few hours sleep in the hostel, we took off to check out the city. St. Petersburg is one of the most “European” cities in Russia and kind of reminded us of Amsterdam with a bunch of canals running through the city and awesome architecture everywhere. After walking around for a while, we were pretty thirsty, so hit up a Russian microbrewery. The beer was pretty good, but we were so jetlagged we could only hang around for one. The next day we were able to hit a lot of the city highlights. We first went to the State Hermitage which is a huge art museum. Erin opted against the audio guide in exchange, choosing rather to listen to my witty commentary (a lot of lousy Russian accents and Communism jokes… at least we saved some money). Next we walked over to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which, despite the rather graphic name, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Erin and I both literally gasped as we walked in. The interior of the church is covered from floor to ceiling in really cool murals. The last thing we did before we left was climb 230 stairs to the top of another church in the city to check out the view of the entire city from the top. That evening we caught a night train to Moscow.

Our Trans-Siberian adventure will be made via the third class cabins on the train. We chose to do this for two reasons: to save money, and to get the chance to meet more people (both Russian and other travelers) along the way. Third class cabins are basically a regular train car, which, instead of being broken into little rooms with either 2 or 4 beds (1^st and 2^nd class), isn’t broken into any rooms and is just lined with bunks. I didn’t really know what to expect on the first train ride, but it was fine. A little cramped, but totally cool. We didn’t get a chance to meet anyone more than a few hellos (still working on our Russian), but this was probably because everyone went to bed pretty soon after the train took off and we arrived to Moscow at 6am.

Once we got to Moscow, we again crashed for a few hours (still pretty jetlagged at this point) and then went to check out the city. Erin really wanted to go to the All Russian Exhibition Center, so after picking up our train ticket to Mongolia, we headed over. The Exhibition Center is this huge park with 15 or so hugely extravagant buildings built in the 30’s to represent the power of the Soviet Russian economic system.  Today, the buildings are surrounded with carnival games and state fair-esque rides. The whole thing is super cheesy and pretty much sums up the rise and fall of the CCCP. Lenin must be rolling over in his mausoleum (he wasn’t… we saw him the next day). After grabbing a quick bite and a beer (you can just walk around with a beer everywhere in Russia… they even have stands which sell draft beer and after getting off trains/busses we’ve definitely seen locals hitting these stands up as early as 7am), we took the metro to Red Square to walk around for the rest of the night. The metro in Moscow is awesome. You never have to wait more than 3 minutes for a train, regardless of what station you’re at, and the stations are amazing architecturally, as well. All the stations are different, but we saw some with murals, chandeliers, mosaics, stained glass, and statues. It was really cool. The next few days we spent hitting all of the tourist sites, going through the kremlin, checking out St. Basil’s Cathedral, walking along the Arbat, and walking around many of the other amazing churches/monasteries/cathedrals spread throughout the city. It was crazy to think that just a few decades ago exactly where we were standing (Red Square/ the Kremlin) evoked fears into many Americans, because we had a blast and experienced nothing but hospitality from our Russian comrades. Hopefully, a few decades from now (or sooner!) our kids can travel to Iraq or Afghanistan and say the same thing (thanks Matt).

The next stop on our trip was a small town about 4.5 hours from Moscow called Suzdal which we bussed to. Suzdal is a small sleepy town along a windy river which although its population is only a few thousand, has over 30 churches. It was a capital city during medieval times so the majority of the churches are from the 13-15^th centuries. The whole town looked like it could have been made by Disney it was so picture perfect. Everyone in town was extremely nice, especially the old lady who ran our hostel who helped us call other hostels (using a lot of sign language – she spoke no English) along our route to help us make reservations (clearly haven’t done that yet). We caught a bus after 2 nights in Suzdal to Vladimir where we had a train to catch the following morning. It didn’t take long for not making reservations to bite us in the ass though as we had to spend the night in the Vladimir train station (actually not as bad as it sounds… there were a few train station attendants making sure everything was above board and that no hobos were around).

After we woke up we had a 6:45am train from Vladimir to Nizhny Novgorod. We hopped on the train ready to sleep for the 3 hour trip, but couldn’t find our beds. Turns out we jumped on the wrong train (still not sure why the attendants checking our tickets let us on). Luckily the train went to the same place and arrived at the same time, we just had to sit in chairs rather than lay in beds (Erin managed to sleep the entire trip regardless). Today we walked around Nizhny all afternoon, checking out the kremlin, a few churches, and their main drag. The gorgeous town is along the Volga River and is at the top of this huge hill, so we definitely got a work out. We needed one, because tomorrow we take our first long train ride… 45 hours on the way to Tomsk. We’re having a blast so far, but already miss everyone back home. We can’t wait for the rest of our adventure though!

Week in Kampala, Uganda

After leaving Nyeihanga, we set off for Kampala (Uganda’s capital) for a week of relaxing before attempting to climb Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. As soon as we arrived we were able to enjoy some of the luxuries we had been without while in the village, hot showers (well just running water in general), toilets, and Westernized food (I had a burger… amazing!).  We kind of just bummed around the hostel the day we got there and the next day. Late on the day after we arrived our buddy from home, Blake Shubert, and his girlfriend, Bianca, arrived. Blake works for the organization we had been volunteering with in Nyeihanga, and was coming to Uganda to check out how all the organization’s operations were working, especially in Nyeihanga. The plan was to brief him on what we had done with our time down in the village, provide him with any ideas or plans for the future of the village, and then just hang out for the rest of the time we had with them.

We got lucky the day after Blake and Bianca arrived. There was an Africa Cup of Nation’s qualifying soccer match between the Uganda and Guinea Bissau national soccer teams downtown about 10 miles from where we were staying. All of Kampala was going crazy for the game. People were dressed in soccer jerseys all over town. We got lunch downtown and the crowds of people we saw in the streets was nuts. When we got to the stadium there were huge lines of people trying to get in and they were so tightly packed that we didn’t really want to get in the lines. We walked around for a little while trying to find a shorter/safer line when we found this gate that was letting cars in. Whenever the police (in full riot gear toting large automatic rifles) would open the gate to let a car in about 50 people would run through the gate and then the riot cops would go crazy, start screaming, and push the people who didn’t make it back with their huge clear shield thingys.  We watched this happen 2 or 3 times until one of the cops just points to Blake and tells him to follow him through the gate. Jackpot. We ended up bribing him to “pay for the tickets” which we never received but at least we were inside!! The crowd inside the stadium was electric. Uganda ended up winning 2-0 and whenever they scored the crowd would erupt and people all over the stadium would blow whistles and go to town with their vuvuzelas. As annoying as they were during the World Cup, being there in person took it to a whole other level. My ears were literally ringing by the end of the match. Another cool thing was after the game was over no one left the stadium. We were planning on waiting around to let things clear out before we left (to avoid any tramplings), but the stadium was completely full even a half hour after the game. By the time we made it to our car we were all pretty tired and ready for dinner and drinks back at the hostel. Unfortunately we were about to experience the worst traffic any of us have ever seen. At literally every intersection the entire way home 3 lanes of traffic (where only one should be) would try and turn in each direction of the intersection at one time. Things would completely grid lock and cars would inch forward as much as they could. After 25 minutes of this, half of the people would get out of their cars and try to direct everyone to get unjammed. About 5 cars would make it out and then the cycle would start over. It took us over 4 hours to get the 10 miles back to the hostel.

The next day we said our goodbyes to Blake and Bianca as they left to continue our efforts in Nyeihanga and then Erin and I took a few hour bus ride to Jinja to whitewater raft the Nile. This trip was one of the coolest/most fun things we’ve done on our entire trip. The river was full of Category 4 and 5 rapids that were tossing us all over the place. Erin and I shared our raft with 2 British guys and our guide. At the beginning our guide told us the day could go one of three ways. We could go easy and make sure the raft didn’t flip over by just going over the edge of the rapids, we could go medium by going near the center of the rapids but there’d be a chance we might flip, or we could go hard and the guide would try to hit the center of the rapid and pretty much try to flip us every time. Obviously the 2 other guys and I chose the hard way. Erin was a little apprehensive but went along with it. By the end of the day the boat had gone over 3 times and I had popped out one more time. By the end of the day we were all exhausted. We pulled the rafts out of the water and a huge BBQ was waiting for us on the banks of the river. It was so good.

The next day we had booked a mini safari through our hostel up to Murchison Falls National Park. The park was about 4 or so hours away by minibus. Our group was made up of Erin and I, another couple who was on holiday from some volunteer work in the DRC, and a really weird Italian guy named Bernardino. Now, we met Bernardino the day before while whitewater rafting, but he was in a different raft so we didn’t interact too much with him (besides being treated to some pretty epic Italian boy-shorts swim trunks… Bernardino wasn’t a small guy). He was a nice enough guy, he just didn’t like the sun and was really afraid of mosquitoes so he was always in jeans and a sweatshirt, lathering the rest of his exposed skin with sun block, and spraying bug spray everywhere. As soon as we got to the park, the group went chimpanzee trekking. We hiked for about an hour with a guide until we spotted a group of chimps in the trees. There were about 5 or 6 female chimps and most of them had baby chimps with them. It was pretty cool just watching them eat and the babies swing from the branches. We had about an hour with them and just before we left the chimps started calling for the male chimps who were a few kilometers away. We waited for a few extra minutes hoping the males would show up, but we didn’t get lucky and hiked back to the bus. We drove to the campsite and just hung out for the rest of the afternoon. One thing that we experienced here that we really hadn’t yet was true equatorial African heat. Where we had been staying in Nyeihanga was at a higher elevation so it never really got too hot and Kampala would maybe get into the low 90s, but in the park it was well over 100. Too hot to even lay down in the tents. The next morning we work up early and went for a game drive around the park. We saw a ton of baboons, giraffes, bushbucks, and elephants. We didn’t see any lions or cheetahs or anything, but we weren’t really expecting to, and there’s always Tanzania! After a quick lunch back at the campsite we jumped on a boat and cruised down the Nile to the falls. The boat ride was about 3 hours long and along the way we would pull the boat over to check out the animals drinking. We saw hundreds of hippos, a few crocodiles, and a bunch of elephants and buffalo. When we got to the falls our group jumped off and hiked to the top. This was when having Bernardino in the group got a little crazy. About a half hour after we started the hike, Bernardino had to stop. The other couple went ahead and we waited with him. He looked terrible. He was just dripping with sweat and he got sick a few times. I told him to take his sweatshirt off because it looked like he was about to get heat stroke. He claimed that he was just sick from spraying bug spray in his tent and then breathing it in 3 hours before, and that he didn’t want to take his shirt off because he didn’t want to get burned. We stayed with his as he basically crawled to the top. He made it and didn’t die so that’s good I guess. The view from the top of the falls was awesome, totally worth it.

On the drive back to Kampala the next day we stopped at a rhino rehabilitation park. All of the rhinos in Uganda were wiped out in the 80s due to poaching, but this park is trying to bring them back. We walked for about a half hour and got to within about 20 yards of 2 huge rhinos. It was pretty cool to be so close to these massive animals.

The next morning we hopped on a bus and headed to Tanzania. It was an overnight bus from Kampala, Uganda to Arusha, Tanzania. The bus was supposed to take 16 hours, but there was some overturned truck in the middle of the night which held us up. The trip ended up taking a full 24 hours. We also had to cross two international borders during the trip. Everyone had to get off the bus at these and go through border control. It was crazy how unregulated these border crossings were. People were just walking back and forth through an open gate. Not exactly like the US-Mexico border. When we got to Arusha, we got our stuff ready for our Kilimanjaro climb which started the next day.

Next up… Climbing Kilimanjaro: He Said, She Said!!!!!

Kili Tweets!!!

Well, we made it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro!! It took us 7 days to get up and down, and was an experience we’ll never forget. It’s tough to describe how we felt when we finally reached Uhuru Peak at nearly 6000m above sea level (mostly we felt cold). We’ll go into much greater detail in a separate post next week (we also still need to describe the awesome week we had in Kampala, Uganda the week before our climb), but we’re heading out on a Tanzanian safari tomorrow and we’re too tired from the climb to type any more!

While we were hiking we came up with 1 or 2 “tweets” every day. Basically, it’s what we were doing/thinking at random snapshots of our trek in 140 characters or less. We wrote these down in a little notebook we brought along and then typed them up below. Hopefully, you’ll find these at least slightly entertaining 🙂 If something doesn’t make complete sense here either a) we were suffering from moderate/severe altitude sickness, b) we’ll explain it in more detail in our next post, or c) I tried to be cleverer than I actually am. Either way, on to the lamest form of social media since Friendster…

Day 1:

Erin (Dinner time): Dinner day 1 and I already can see my breath and can’t feel my toes. It’s only downhill from here. Actually it’s only uphill (get it?).

Brian (Dinner time): Day 1, feeling good. King Kong ain’t got shit on me!

Day 2:

Brian (Morning): E’s idea of a good day isn’t making it to the next camp or avoiding altitude sickness, but if there’s popcorn at evening tea.

Brian (Evening Tea): Altitude is starting to take effect on E. Spent 15 min walking back down mount. looking for glove that was in her pocket!

Erin (Tea): Todays highlights: woken up w/ cup of coffee in tent, exotic scenery, popcorn at tea. Lowlight: losing my glove… in my pocket!

Erin (Dinner): More highlights: pico served in avocado bowl, watching sunset over mountains from tent, perfect view of moon over peak, ginger soup.

Day 3:

Erin (Lunch): “Lost” my glove… AGAIN! Very forgetful lately. Like J. Foxx says: Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-altitude.

Brian (Lunch): Climbing Kili is giving me a glimpse into old age. I’m always tired, always grumpy, and have to pee every half hour.

Erin (Dinner): Note to self: holding breath to go in outhouse is NOT a smart idea at high altitudes!

Brian (Dinner): Note to self: make sure all of Erin’s gloves are attached to her jacket from now on.

Day 4:

Brian (Lunch): Remember that movie Cliffhanger with Sly Stallone? What a great movie!

Erin (Tea): Good news: don’t need to hold breath to use outhouses at this camp. Bad News: it’s because they have no doors!

Brian (Dinner): We’ve learned a lot about each other on this climb. Most importantly that E can change any song lyric to include Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Erin (Dinner): It’s freezing! Should have invested in one of those two people sleeping bags!

Day 5:

Brian (Dinner): Now this is how climbing Kilimanjaro should be… 2 hours hiking, 8 hours napping.

Erin (Dinner): Just finished dinner. Breakfast’s in less than 5 hours. We signed up for this??

Brian (Breakfast/11pm): Well after a few hours sleep now it’s time for a 9 hr walk straight up then straight back down… seems slightly pointless.

Erin (Breakfast/11pm): FML.

Day 6:

Brian (6am/Summit): Trying to reach the summit of Kili is like walking on the beach. Only it’s -17C, with a 45 deg incline, howling wind, and you’re holding your breath.

Erin (6am/Summit): Wait… there’s no elevator down to the bottom??

Brian (Lunch): Ugh… going down sucks too…

Erin (Lunch): Contrary to what I was convinced of hours ago, my toes and fingers suffered no permanent damage from the cold!

Day 7:

Erin: We made it! Time to set sight on new goals: hot shower, cold beer, flat (indoor) bed.

Brian: As Shania Twain made famous and Erin is constantly singing: “Looks like we made it, look how far we’ve come my baby.”

Last Few Days in the Village

Over the last few weeks in Nyeihanga we were very busy. One of the major items we wanted to get finished before we left was the building of a new barn/church/community center near the school. Things moved muuuuuuch slower than we would have liked. Jackson (the pastor) and I went to pick up wooden poles (literally chopped down trees that we picked up from the forest), piles of sand and gravel for the foundation, and bricks. The last day we were in the village we were able to see the ground breaking… only about 20 or so more days and it will be done!

Another initiative we (read: Erin) were responsible for was starting a microfinance initiative which would lend microloans to small business owners. In order to kick off the initiative, they needed 20 people who were interested, qualified, and could bring the requirements for signing up. Getting everyone to meet on time and bring their requirements was quite the challenge, but by the day we left we had 19 individuals signed up! We are lucky that after we leave our buddy Blake is going to be coming to the village and will be able to keep all of our efforts going without losing any steam.

The biggest initiative we are involved in also required the smallest amount of effort (at least while we were in the village). Our “Kili for a Kause” campaign has been a huuuuge success! As of right now, we have raised over $1200!!!! We’ve reached our goal of $1000, but let’s see if we can hit $1500. Thank you all for your generous donations, and if you haven’t had a chance to make a contribution don’t worry. There’s still time!

One big adventure we had a few weekends ago was a trip to Kisoro to visit Mgahinga National Park. The first day we were there we went Golden Monkey tracking. Basically, it was Erin and I with a guide and an armed guard (to scare away any rogue buffalos along the way). We hiked up the side of a mountain for about an hour or so until we got to a huge bamboo forest where we met the three trackers who had found where the golden monkeys were that day. There was a group of around 30-40 monkeys spread out in the trees around us jumping all over the place and eating the leaves. It was really cool. We got to spend about an hour or so with them before we had to hike back. That night we enjoyed our first beers in over a month (the pastor frowns upon alcohol) and boy were they good… well as good as a Nile Special Lager can be.

The next day in Kisoro was big day and the real reason we wanted to do the trip. We went Gorilla Tracking. Uganda is one of the only places in the world you can track mountain gorillas (also Rwanda, and Dem. Rep. of Congo). This was awesome. It was pretty much the same set up as the day before with the armed guard and the guide, but there was also two other people in our group, a guy and a girl from the UK. The hike was a little bit longer today (about 2 hours or so) and for most of it we weren’t on a path… just hiking up the side of a mountain through the forest/brush/prickers/etc. At times it was pretty tough, but once we got to where we were going it was amazing. We were standing in the middle of a family of huge mountain gorillas. It got a little dicey at one point when the silver back started to kind of flank us, but he was just trying to get closer to a huge bush where he plopped on his side and started eating leaves. Most of the time the gorillas were pretty lazy, just laying around or eating leaves, but at times the little kid gorillas were hilarious. There was one who was about a year old who instead of walking like all the other ones would spin wherever he wanted to go. There were also a few young guys swinging in the branches above us. The whole experience was amazing. To be so close to such a huge animal in their habitat was really cool, and with so few of these animals left in the world (numbers range from 300-600) who knows how long they’ll be around.

The last day we decided to climb to the summit of Mt. Sabyinyo which is the mountain we’d been walking all over to find the monkeys the past 2 days. It. Was. Difficult. It was definitely good practice for our Kilimanjaro summit attempt. We climbed up over 1200m and walked over 15k in 8 hours. About a quarter of the hike was so steep you had to climb up these makeshift ladders. It was pretty crazy to climb up this ladder made of tree branches that are over 50 feet straight up with nothing really behind you while you’re in a cloud and can’t really see more than 100 or so feet in every direction. This climb was probably more difficult than any single day on Kilimanjaro, so should’ve been good practice. Sabyinyo was only about 3600m up, where Kili is about 5900, so we still haven’t experienced the altitude yet!

Our last week in the village was bittersweet. We are closer to getting home, but it was sad to say good bye to the people we had spent the last two months with. We had made friends, learned a ton about living in an African village and how far past our comfort level we can go, and hopefully done a lot of good work in the community. Our last day we told the community about our fundraiser and they went ballistic. Everyone was so grateful, but it was the least we could do after everything they had done for us. Many of the people also brought us awesome gift to take back with us (a few traditional Ugandan baskets, a banana fiber mat).We couldn’t thank them enough. It was just another example of the Ugandan generosity we’ve experienced during our entire stay. We’re sad to go, but I think we are leaving Nyeihanga different than how we got here, and for the better.

Check out the New Fundraiser – Kili for a Kause

Hi Everyone!

Please check out the new fundraiser Erin and I are starting in order to raise money for the NGO we are working with out here in Uganda. In order to raise funds, we will be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in a little under a month. Please help us out by clicking the link at the top of the page or clicking here. Any little bit helps. Hopefully we make it to the top (we’re not exactly your quintessential mountain climbers). Wish us luck!!!

So… What the heck are we doing here?

That’s a good question and one we’ve been asked a lot! Well besides lying in the sun eating bananas and playing with monkeys, we’ve been pretty busy here in Nyeihanga.

We spend time every Thursday playing with the kids who belong to the LOLGM school for orphans and vulnerable children. They’ve been on summer vacation since we arrived (though start up a new term this Monday) so we have been doing sort of outside activity days with them. This is pretty challenging considering that there is not so much as a soccer ball to use in games and that they don’t understand most of what we say so giving instructions is pretty tough. Usually there are about thirty kids ranging in age from two to about ten. We play a few local games – one that is sort of like Duck Duck Goose and another that is like Red Rover but instead of running through people’s arms, two kids try to pull the other across a line. We tried Red Light, Green Light but the instructions were pretty hard to explain with just gestures. We do relay races pretty successfully, though after a few races they get too excited and all go at the same time. Still, it is a pretty fun game! The best game to play is Freeze Tag. For those of you who didn’t grow up playing it, a few people are “it” and if you get tagged you have to freeze until someone crawls under your legs. Watching a five year old tell Brian to crawl under their legs is pretty funny. On a rainy day we brought our computer and played Freeze Dance for a few hours. It turned into Brian and I taking turns being the leader and doing goofy dance moves that the kids would copy til the music paused and we all froze. They loved it. And of course Brian represented by teaching them the Hokie Pokie!

My absolute favorite thing we do is to work with the Functional Adult Learning class that takes places twice a week. The women (and occasional man who comes) are amazing in their drive. They mostly learn English and literacy but are also learning some basic math and household budgeting skills. The teacher is an incredible and smart woman from the village who volunteers her time. They work so hard that usually the class only ends when the sun has set and they need to rush to get home before dark. Brian and I mostly help with speaking English. Especially with confidence in speaking. I have to say though, I think they have taught us as much Runyankore (the local language) as we’ve taught them English!

One of the major things we’ve set out to accomplish is starting up a microfinance initiative in the LOLGM Nyeihanga community. Microfinance is basically giving small loans to a poor individual that they can invest in a business to generate income, pay back the loan, take out another loan to reinvest in their business, generate more income, and so on. Its success comes from its sustainability and accountability of the individual receiving the loan, but also from ‘empowering’ an individual to help herself. Also, lending often takes place in groups so the whole process of microfinance fosters community involvement and support- all goals of LOLGM. So far this project has moved quickly. Well quickly in Africa time! In the past few weeks Brian and I have researched different potential microfinance organizations to partner with, contacted ones we thought would be a good fit for LOLGM, met with them, had one come give information to the beneficiaries in Nyeihanga, and now, starting this Monday, there will officially be a microfinance initiative at LOLGM Nyeihanga!

Once Nyeihanga members have access to finance, the empowerment options are endless. We’re looking into giving beneficiaries training in income generating activities along with assistance in creating a business plan once they have the skill. One activity is in making handy crafts such as woven reed baskets that are very popular here yet in limited supply. Another activity is mushroom growing. This is a good option because once trained in the growing process, returns are huge: for every dollar put in, a grower could make $4-$6. And mushrooms are in high demand yet low supply.

We’ve also been helping out with getting a barn built that will be a church/community center for the quickly expanding organization. Even just since we’ve been here, the current building has become overflowing during church services. The class size for the school for orphans and vulnerable children is doubling this term. Plus new activities like the microfinance and training for beneficiaries has really created a need for more space. Earlier this year Blake did a Crossfit fundraiser to raise money for the barn and now here we are starting to build it! Well, really this is Brian’s gig. You know, since he’s a man. He’s done a lot of sitting down with Jackson and the builders to make some semblance of a budget (an almost impossible task here in Uganda), gone around in a pick-up truck to pick up bricks, sand, tree poles (yes I have pictures). He is trying to track the costs as best as possible but again that type of accounting is a pretty foreign concept here. We head to a city near us later today to pick up more funds and look into getting more supplies. The plan is to start building next week and be finished before we leave. However, a saying here in Uganda is slowly by slowly. It pretty accurately describes the pace that everything here moves. We’ll see 🙂

Village Living: He said, She said

Well Faithful Reader, you are in for a treat. I’d like to present to you the first edition of He said, She said. How this will work is basically I’ll start writing and Erin will pop in with comments and back and forth. Basically this gives us a chance to write things in a little bit different way and give you all a chance to remember our witty banter. This is still a work in progress so if it doesn’t really work, you’re in luck… we’ll never do it again! Now, on with the show.

Brian: After our stay in Kampala, we drove for about 6 hours to a smallllll village called Nyeihanga. It is basically a main road, a semi-main side road (our street) and a bunch of small alleyways around. There are a bunch of farms outside of town.  There’s probably around 500ish people altogether.

Erin: Hmm, okay Brian got things mostly right. I think there are more than 500 people but we agreed to disagree…He also forgot to mention that Nyeihanga is surrounded by enormous rolling green hills covered with banana farms. It’s beautiful. We’re staying in a sort of apartment in the community pastor’s house, Pastor Jackson. We have a tiny little bedroom that is 90% taken up by our very comfortable, mosquito net covered bed. We also have a living room area where there are some chairs and a table. Our apartment’s in the commercial part of the village where all of the local shops and restaurants are. This is the only part of the village with electricity. There’s no running water.

Brian: Basically, the entire apartment we’re in is the slightly smaller than our bedroom back home. The pastor’s room is right next door and his digs are the exact same size as ours. The whole no running water part has been interesting. We get a bucket of boiling water in the mornings and at night which we use to brush our teeth, take a “shower”, and wash our hands throughout the day. Showers are a little tougher than back home. There definitely isn’t the 6 full body jets I’m used to back home. There is an area in the court yard area outside our room we use for showers. To shower, basically, we take our hot water bucket, our jerrycan of cold water, a basin, and all of our ingenuity and go to town.  Things get pretty interesting, and the first few tries I came out pretty sudsy. I think we’re both pros now, though.

Erin: A full shower including washing and conditioning my hair takes up about a milk jug or so worth of water. Compared to what a Ugandan would use, this is a ton of water. Don’t get me wrong, we will love to be back where we can take long, hot showers with unlimited running water. But the bucket showers do get us as clean as we would be at home. I would choose a bucket shower in warm Uganda with hot water any day over a running water shower in cold Turkey with cold water! Our bathroom is an outhouse about twenty yards behind Jackson’s home. It’s just a hole in the ground with a jerrycan of water and some disinfectant powder to keep things clean. But it belongs just to Brian and I, and it even has a lock to make sure that we’re the only ones using it. They offered us a bucket to use at night for “emergencies” but thankfully we haven’t needed it yet! There are cows, goats, and chickens roaming freely everywhere in Nyeihanga and the area around our outhouse is no exception. It is so dark here at night that sometimes you can’t see a cow or long horn bull until you are right near them.  Or you will hear something moving and shine your flashlight to find that there are half a dozen long horns walking right by you. Night trips to the bathroom aren’t so bad though because the stars here are incredible. We can see so many more stars than at home that most of the constellations we’re used to hard to identify.

Brian: Hmmm…. the bathroom. The hole in the ground isn’t exactly a technology I’d like to implement in a future home, but I guess it gets the job done.

One great thing about being here is we are having all of our meals prepared for us. Meals times are a little bit different than back home though. We usually eat breakfast around 9:30, lunch is at around 2, afternoon tea is at 7, and dinner is at 8:30ish, but sometimes dinner isn’t served until 10. We eat all of our meals with Jackson, anther community leader, Enoch, Enoch’s wife Penelope, and often a few other people from the community.  Enoch’s wife Penelope does most of the cooking here, though they live outside of the more commercial portion of the village where we stay. Before each meal someone in the household walks around with a basin and a jug of water to clean everyone’s hands. Ugandans love to eat and love to encourage others to eat too. They say Erin eats the amount a three year old Ugandan but by American standards we’re both eating tons (and tons)! They keep saying that by the time we leave Uganda, Erin should have a stomach the size of Jackson’s wife, Pam (who is 7 months pregnant) so that she will look like an African woman. They’re always telling me that skinny women are a sign that the husband is cruel to his wife in private. Erin always just insists that she’s just full and that I’m not really that cruel… looks like I’ve got her trained already!

Erin: There is SO much food! Every day is a battle between being polite by eating as much as is expected and avoiding a stomach ache. One of the first nights I thought tea was our actual dinner because there was so much food served (and it was so late at night!). The tea and dinner time conversation is usually when we have the most laughs and learn the most about Ugandan life from our hosts.

The food itself… one of the most pleasant surprises is the food. Incredible! Every meal we eat half a dozen different fresh fruit, vegetables, and other dishes. There are four different types of bananas ranging in sweetness from much sweeter than the banana’s we’re used to, to very starchy with no sweetness at all. Sometimes the bananas are mushed all together into a paste, sometimes they are mushed and cooked into a cake, sometimes they are chopped and fried, sometimes their cooked whole in their peels… There are more ways to cook bananas than Bubba cooked shrimp! (Wow… barely two months into marriage and Brian’s lame jokes are already rubbing off on me?!)  Another common food is this purple paste-like substance that scared me until I tried it. It turned out to be peanut paste and it’s delicious! Millet is another common food. It is a doughy type of bread made, I think, from a grain. The ladies are supposed to teach me how to make it soon! Every day we are served these grape-sized green vegetable called bitter tomatoes that are supposed to be extremely healthy for you. They are one of the few foods we’ve been served that’s hard to get down. I am pretty sure that the reasons we are served so much of them is because they are said to increase fertility. We are served a LOT of foods that are said to increase fertility and libido. Peanuts, I’m told, are a food your wife shouldn’t eat when she is away from you.  We have pineapples every single day, lots of avocado, peanuts, pumpkin, mushrooms bigger than my hands, a variety of potato-like starches we’ve never heard of. We eat almost nothing processed and almost everything comes from within a mile of where we’re living. Even the eggs and meat are what at home we’d call free range. Already I can feel the difference from eating so healthy. We might be being encouraged to be glutinous but at least it’s with delicious and healthy food! Brian, what am I forgetting?

Brian: Lame jokes? What are you talking about? You call this lame… What is E.T. short for?

Erin: Oh god, what?

Brian: He’s just got those little legs!

Erin: Is it too late for an annulment?

Brian: Whatever that’s gold. Ok the food… The meat we’re eating is amazing. We don’t eat it every day, but most days. We get all types including beef, goat, and chicken. Goat is interesting, but pretty good. Beef liver is a common dish. Erin didn’t know that it was liver until about the 5^th time we had it. She said she really liked it, but had she known it was liver probably wouldn’t have tried it. I guess sometimes it’s best not to know. The past few days we’ve had some really weird food. Three days ago, a very nice lady who we’ve been eating with a lot brought over a huge bag of grasshoppers. Apparently they are a delicacy here. They catch them, rip off the legs and wings, sauté them, throw some salt on, and eat them. They are amazing. Erin didn’t like them too much, but I had a bunch. They sort of taste like Fritos. Then, 2 days ago we were invited to a family’s home for dinner. We had had most of the food they served, but they also served cow intestines in a broth as the main course. This was a little weirder tasting than the grasshoppers, but still pretty good. Erin liked this a lot more than the grasshoppers. I guess she just didn’t like the fact that the grasshoppers were staring at her while she was eating them. One thing she didn’t have a problem with though, is holding a live chicken that was a gift from a neighbor. The chicken was dinner the next night!!

Another really good food we discovered is called chapati. It is like a thin fried bread almost like a pancake, but thinner. It is a type of street food they sell all over the place. You can also get a rolex, which is a chapati with a fried egg cooked in it and wrapped up with onions. Soooo good. Chapati is the one unhealthy food we’ve eaten here.

Friday is market day in the village. They hold the market right across the street from where we are staying. It’s crazy how there is just a huge open field there 6 days of the week and then on Fridays it is packed with vendors who string up ropes everywhere to hang up tarps to cover their goods. You can buy everything from silverware to clothes to vegetables at the market. The best thing though is what they call pancakes. They’re not like what we would call a pancake though. They are these little fried discs the size of a poker chip which are a mix of bananas and a vegetable called cassava (kind of like a starchy potato). They are phenomenal and you can get a huge bag of them for like 20 cents.

Well there you have it. The first HS,SS in RAB…AG history. Let us know what you think and we may do one again, or, more likely, you’ll never have to read one again. Miss you all!

Ugandan Generosity

After our Middle East adventure, we headed to Uganda where we are volunteering for two months. Many of you may know Blake Shubert, a friend of both Brian and mine from high school. Blake has been the director of global operations for an international Christian service organization called Light of the Lord Global Missions (LOLGM) for more than a year and a half. This organization is especially cool, in my opinion, because they strive to make their aid projects self-sustaining through small business. Their Kampala branch, for example, launched a successful dairy enterprise that funds its projects. When we decided we wanted to have a volunteer component to our honeymoon, we first thought of Blake and the good work we know he does with LOLGM.

Our flight from Istanbul got to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, early morning the Sunday before Easter. We stayed in a pretty nice hostel on the outskirts of the city that met my standards because it had hot showers and monkeys roaming around the ground! (Mention of monkeys is probably a dead giveaway that it’s Erin writing this post. Not surprisingly, monkeys have quickly ousted camels to resume their position as my favorite animal). After spending Sunday catching up on sleep, Monday and Tuesday we were shown around Kampala by two guys from LOLGM, Stephen and John, who do a lot of the on the ground management of LOLGM projects in Uganda. They took us to get phones and an internet stick to use in the village, took us to a zoo and to the “source of the Nile” – the point where Lake Victoria starts draining into the Nile. The conversations were pretty interesting with a lot of lost in translation moments where Brian and I had no clue what was going on. But we had a great time in Kampala with Stephen and John. Somehow we managed to find out that they worked in Iraq for the same company I had worked for in Virginia right up until our wedding. This is especially crazy because the portion of the company operating in the U.S. is tiny, maybe a hundred people, and they (and a LOLGM guy from the village) are probably the only Ugandans my company ever employed. Small world!! Kampala is surprisingly small for a capital city but it is full of people and sprawling, with bad enough traffic to make us miss our old commutes up 495 (not).

Wednesday we headed down to Nyeihanga, the village in southwest Uganda, five hours from Kampala, where we are spending about 2 months helping out. The LOLGM branch in Nyeihanga is really new – it began in late 2010 and already has some great projects going such as a school for vulnerable children and orphans and an adult literacy program. We’re going to be working with these and also with getting some sustainable businesses going. A highlight of the drive up was that when we would pass through towns, where traffic would slow, dozens of people in blue vests would run up to your car and shove all sorts of foods, drinks, and other things for sale into your window. Then, as soon as another car would go by, they would take off and sprint towards that car. And then sprint to another car, and so on. I guess with so many vendors, competition was fierce and you had to be fast to make a sale. Brian tried some skewers of grilled meat but I thought it was safer, and more appetizing, to stick to roasted bananas.

Thursday was our official welcome ceremony by the community. It was one of the most amazing experiences of both of our lives. The event took place on the grounds of a building that doubles as a church, a school for kids and adults, and a center for other community activities. First, we were welcomed with songs by the kids from the community school, then songs by the adult education participants, and then songs by the church choir. These songs were beautiful and personalized to welcome specifically me and Brian. They were all choreographed with dances and accompanied by drums. We took some short videos and pictures that don’t do the performances justice but at least give a bit of a picture. We’ll post when we have fast internet again. Next, some of the kids and adult learners recited various poems they had written. Finally, the kids and the choir each performed plays they wrote for this occasion. We didn’t understand everything that went on in the plays, but they were seriously funny and Brian even said his cheeks hurt by the end from all the smiling and laughing. As if all of this wasn’t enough, the people of the community all brought gifts to personally welcome us. We ended up with an enormous pile of fruits, veggies, eggs, even two sugar cane stalks two feet taller than Brian! Now, two weeks later, we are still getting daily gifts of fruits and veggies. Even today we were brought a bushel of sugar cane stalks, a big bag of guavas, and a bag of local berries! After the presentations, we found out that we were expected to make a speech (this is something we end up having to do at every community event we attend – so at least five times weekly!). It really wasn’t hard to find words to say after so much generosity! Brian said some great, heartfelt words and we passed out some measly candy and coloring books we brought for the kids. The community spirit here and the kindness of the people are humbling. We hope during our time here we are able to give back something more substantial to the amazing people here.

Over the past two weeks we have attended events ranging from Easter Baptisms in the local stream to the school kids’ term graduation. My favorite thing is definitely the adult literacy classes where we get to work with some incredibly motivated women.  Mostly we are just trying to get involved in everything to learn more about how things work here. There are about a billion adorable kids that we get to play with, we’re working to get a microfinance program started … the only thing that could make me happier is if there were more monkeys roaming the village streets!!