The Happy Blog.

Sorry there haven’t been any entries lately.  I’ve been in Uganda for two weeks (no internet access and really busy!) so tons more blogs about that will be coming!

But this is the happy blog, as requested by my dear sister Elise.  I promise that my trip hasn’t been ALL depressing and intense.   So here’s three things that have been super fun and happy:

1.  About a month ago, we took a class fieldtrip to what’s called a Millennium Village Project.  Essentially, it’s a project where donors focus on one struggling town and invest significant chunks of money in it to implement the UN’s Millennium Development Goals from 2000 (which are very broad goals set to alleviate poverty through projects like education, agricultural development, and getting access to water/shelter/food/etc.).  We visited one such village, called Mayange, and got to visit a farm and a health care center, both boosted with donor money to ideally get them off the ground and running sustainably.  The happy (and not potentially problematic, like the whole Village Project) part is that we got to meet this wonderful 68-year-old man who gave us all passion fruit—STRAIGHT FROM THE TREE.  Straight up organic, fresh, yummy and delicious passion fruit, from the farm to my mouth.  YES.
2. On our way to Uganda, right after our bus drove over the NILE RIVER first of all, WE SAW BABOONS.  Not only did we see them, but we got to FEED them.  Not only did we get to feed them, we got to actually HAND the banana to them.  I even touched some baboon fingers in the process of them grabbing bananas out of my hand.
3. And the absolute coolest thing so far?  We went on a safari in Queen Elizabeth National Park during our stay in Uganda.  We first took a boat ride and saw hippos, elephants, water buffalo, crocodiles, birds…  I took so many pictures that hopefully I’ll put up soon.  And then we went on an evening game drive where we drove our big bus through an open savannah and saw tons of gazelle/antelope-type things, herds of elephants, huge groups of water buffalo, warthogs, and mongoose.  (Pictures to come!)  We spent the night in the park, listening to all of the absolutely wild animal noises coming from everywhere and watching a few antelopes and hippos occasionally meandering behind our lodge.  Then we went on a 6:30am morning game drive and saw… LIONS!  We couldn’t see much of them since they were pretty far away but that didn’t stop us from excitingly singing the Lion King and sticking our heads out the windows to get a better glimpse.

More (pics and blogs) coming soon!

xox.