Settling In

So much has happened in the past 5 days so I'm going to try and keep this succint. We love it here. The weather is always beautiful. It is either beautiful and sunny, or beautiful and raining. But if it does rain it lasts for only a few minutes, then drys back up and everything just looks better. The scenery is often too much to take in. Green, palm tree covered hills as far as you can see, red clay ground, and clouds that stack up like mountains in the sky. We've really never seen anything like it. Leaving Portland, the thing we thought we would miss most in the scenery were the giant mountian peaks, but here the clouds stack up so high, it looks like you are surrounded by mountains. School does not start until the 7th of Feb so over the last few days our time has been spent settling in, getting to know the kids and learning the culture. Its very different. All of the smaller children do not know much English and so both Kami and I are studying like crazy everyday to learn Lugandan. Its a really challenging language (esp in pronounciation) but its fun trying to learn and the kids love to help (and laugh at us when we get it wrong.)
Right now our life includes: Waking up at 6-6:30. Gronola bar, then we run about 4 miles through several villages. Everyone stops and points, little kids shout Mizungu! over and over. Come back, walk to the water hole, pump water, bring it back, wash body using a basin. Eat a pinneapple for breakfast. Study for awhile, see how the kids are doing. Help around the the home till lunch. Eat lunch around 1 (the food is amazing: beans, rice, bannas, potatos (called Irish), cabbage, chipati (basically like tortillas only way better tasting) and jak fruit (really sticky, really sweet.) Study vocab, help around the home. Play with the kids. Teach them songs, help study english.) At dusk every night I play futbol on a clay pitch beside the home until dark. Its my favorite time of day. When the sun sets with these clouds, the sky has a hundred layers each with a different color. If it has not rained the ground is very dry, almost like rock and none of kids have shoes. But they play anyway. At this time, Kami, if she is not playing, sits with the smaller kids laughing and playing. They crawl all over her fascited with her skin and her hair. The call her Beronzi (not spelled right) which means beautiful in Lugandan. Eat dinner around 7:30 or 8. Only time in the day Kami and I are alone, so we talk about the day and laugh and the cultural differences or stories from the kids. At 9 every night we all join together in a big room, sing songs, play drums and pray. No matter how old each of the kids are (even 6 years old) they all have perfect rythym and every night different kids play the drums. The singing is beautiful. See goodnight, kids go to sleep. Wash face, write in journal or study more words. Sleep by 10-10:30. Night is filled with more noises than I have ever heard before. Wild dogs fight outside our windown, cows walk by, birds, bats, hundreds of different sounding insects, heat bugs, periodic rain that sounds like thunder on the tin roof (it rains harder here than anywher I have ever been before), and several other sounds I have not identified yet. Haven't slept all the way through an entire night yet. Get plenty of rest though.
We're happy, getting darker, getting smarter, exhausted in the best way every night and totally content here. Tons of adjustments that make life interesting. We love you all.