Days 1 and 2: "Welcome Completely"

The journey begins...

DAY 1: The stopclock ended at 27 hours of travel time, but we finally made it to our Nufu House on the Makerere Univeristy campus in Kampala, Uganda!(minus the unfortunate event that a jar of peanut butter was taken by TSA) Just so everyone knows, we made it through without a hiccup, safe and sound with all bags accounted for. We started our journey bright and early out of RDU at 6am, waiting for our plane as we watched Marc chow down on a burger at 5:30am, then we landed at the Dulles aiport, made our last phone calls for 3 weeks, and headed out to Ethiopia on a 13 hour flight across the Atlantic. Dozing in and out of naps and killing time watching movies, we landed in Ethiopia with a round of applause from the passengers and made the last leg of the trip to Uganda. Our wonderful drivers, James and Wilson, picked us up and took us to our temporary home-away-from-home at Makerere University. Crossing the street here reminds us of the game of Frogger, except real life...and you don't get 3 lives. We spent our first team dinner out together as a celebration of getting through our crazy journey in and out of airports and celebrating all the great things to come. Driving through the streets of Uganda today, finally made it feel like reality and made us realize even more that we wouldn't be here without the help of others.

DAY 2: After a very healthy, well-deserved sleep in (2:00pm) we left for our tour of the campus and the city, very well-rested. We were greeted by our host for the week, Sam, a 2nd year pharmacy student from Makerere.

Snack break in the City Centre

Sam gave us a tour of the campus and took us around the city center before we headed to Ndere Centre to watch the cultural dance group, Ndere troupe. They took tribal dances from different regions all over Uganda to give us the ultimate cultural Ugandan experience. Our meal was definitely something we've never had before, goat. Don't knock it til you try it, friends. At the end of the performance, the audience themselves got to show off their dance moves on the stage and have some fun with the troupe. Jenn bonged it out on a Ugandan drum and Steph shimmied with one of the African dancers. It was a night to remember and a great way to kick of our Ugandan journey. We are very excited to start our work tomorrow at the dental school, so stay tuned!

the Ndere dance troupe

Enjoying some traditional Ugandan food with our new friend, Sam