The Past Few Days...

Hello from the Southern Hemisphere!! We traveled to Mbarara on Sunday. The drive was a long one, it took about 10 hours total, but we did make some stops along the way so it did not seem as bad. Our first stop was right after we stopped at the equator to do some shopping and take a couple of pictures, but we did not take a lot of pictures because it was raining and muddy so we decided to take more pictures on our way back to Kampala. On our way to Mbarara, we decided to drive through a small national park. There we were looking for zebras and elephants, but we did not see any, we did however see a lot of warthogs and kob, which are similar to deer.

Then on Monday, we had a laid back day where we drove two hours to the third deepest lake in the world near Kabale. We stayed for the day at a resort that was on the lake. The resort was very pretty with a lot of flowers and gorgeous views of the lake. The first thing we did there was a boat tour of the lake. We saw many different islands, some had schools, some had houses, and others were just landscape. After the boat tour, we had teatime with tea and crumpets. After teatime, we went for a little hike on the trail they have there. Then it was lunchtime. Lunch was more traditional Ugandan food, which I have become used to, and it does not taste that weird anymore. After lunch, we just had time to relax before the ride home. 

Tuesday was our African Safari Day. We drove two hours to Queen Elizabeth National Park, which is the second largest national park in Uganda. We were going to have lunch first, but lunch was not ready for us when we arrived, so we went on our boat tour first. The boat tour was really fun!! I saw a lot of animals along the lake bathing, drinking water, and just relaxing. The animals were really cool. I saw elephants, hippos, water buffalos, and so many different kinds of birds! It was really cool to see them so close and in their natural environment! Then we trekked up the short cut to lunch. Then after lunch we went on our game drive. We were hoping to see a lion, but they were all sleeping, but we did see more kob and baboons that were right next to the bus! It was so cool!! We went on the game drive around dusk because that was when most animals would be out eating.

Today was so fun! We went to a primary school to paint a building. I went over with the early group at 6:30 to clean the building up. I helped sand all the walls down, and boy did the walls need to be sanded! There were so many pieces of paper left over stuck on the wall that we had to get off before we painted. My arm is definitely sore tonight! But when the rest of the group arrived, we had an assembly with the school where we introduced ourselves and then answered any questions the students had. Then we had a time of interacting and talking with the students. The students were so fascinated with looking at the pictures on our cameras of themselves. After we took pictures and the students went to class, we painted the building. We painted the building that housed the library, the headmistress’ office, and the P7 class, which is like 6th grade. The building ended up looking really nice once we were all done! After we got done with our work, we went back to the hotel and a group of us went swimming. It felt so relaxing to jump into the pool!

Tomorrow we are driving back to Kampala and Red Chilli, which is where we will be staying for almost the rest of the trip.

The internet connection is not allowing me to upload any pictures, so I will post pictures as soon as we get back to Red Chilli.