Good Food and exteneded Kampala Holiday

Hello All! This is me updating my blog before you think I’ve been swallowed up. So, I have good things and some not so good things but, no worries, everything will be A-OK!
First, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I celebrated it in Tororo with ~20 other volunteers. We had the magnificent feast on the Saturday following the actual holiday. I made apple pie, which is a holiday classic and tradition. There was no pie pan to be found, so my pie was actually baked in a square, glass casserole dish. Even though it was not round, the pie was very yummy. All the volunteers contributed a dish, so we had quite a feast. The final count was (homemade) mac-and-cheese, fried chicken, Amish bread, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed irish (regular) potatoes, vegetable kabobs, vegetable medley (I helped to cut the carrots! And then lied when they asked if I had washed them… they looked clean enough and nobody got sick!), and pumpkin-apple soup (absolutely delicious, it tasted almost like cider). Then, there was the dessert table. I had cheated and already used my second stomach, which most of you know I reserve for desserts, to get a second plate of mac-and-cheese, so I was bursting at the seams. However, Thanksgiving is all about eating until you want to die and then eating a little bit more until you actually die or fall into a food coma. Oh yeah, and being thankful too : ) Besides, one cannot pass up homemade desserts in this country because they are very few, far between and the smell alone makes you lose control. So, our dessert table had cheesecake with chocolate drizzled on it, apple pie, cherry pie, chocolate cake, brownies, frosting, and banana pudding with dolce de leche (which I’m pretty sure is French for caramel) topping. And, some very nice sangria was made, where I also helped in cutting the fruit for it. All in all, it felt like Thanksgiving. Everybody was in the kitchen, cooking, helping, washing or shouting. I couldn’t have asked for more and I’m very thankful for all the friends that I’ve made here. They have, truly, become my second family.
The term has officially ended and all my girls are back home for holiday. I gave my exams and graded them all before I had to go to Kampala. After grading them, and comparing them to the beginning of term exams, I was a little disappointed at first because they were a bit lower. I thought that maybe I hadn’t spent enough time teaching or that I had gone to fast. However, I ran into one of the students in my S1 math class. She asked me what the high score was and I told her. She was very impressed and said, “Well taught.” And that was all it took to lift me out of my funk. Really, the scores and the average of the students are not, and should not, be the only indicator of success. My girls are getting scores that they hadn’t gotten before. The high score in my class is higher than the average. I should be happy that the girls are really and truly trying. They are now comfortable enough with me that they ask questions when they don’t understand, as opposed to nodding absently. I have more girls participating in class then when I first began. So, even though the scores aren’t what I hoped for, this last term was still a success. I’m trying my best and so are the girls and that’s really all you can ask.
So, that’s the good stuff, now for the not so good. I’ve actually been in Kampala for the last week and a half for medical reasons. I originally came the weekend of the 21st to cheer people on in the annual Kampala marathon. The following Monday, I went to the PCMO (PC nurses) to get checked out because I had been having kidney pains. Now, I just had a UTI at the end of October, so I was expecting to just be given the drugs and go on my merry little way. That, however, was not meant to be. I will not go into the details because I don’t think you all are interested in the specificities of my body functions, but it was not a UTI and the pain in the kidneys has noticeably increased. But, they still do not know what it is. This, combined with a blood test and the fact that I have peed the entire rainbow (except for the most beloved colour yellow!) means that I am most likely (~90%) being sent to South Africa for more tests. Now, there’s no need to worry. Hopefully, I will be back here for Christmas, but I just wanted to give a general FYI. So, the good thing is that I get to tick another country off my list and I can investigate World Cup things.
So, that is what’s happening right now. I’ll let you all know if something changes but, I’m not dying and beside the kidney tenderness, I don’t feel sick at all. Hope you all enjoyed Black Friday shopping! As always, miss and love you all!!!
~Rachael