U-S-A!

I never thought I would be cheering that! To all you lame-os who don't know, the US somehow managed to take first place in their group in the World Cup and will be moving on to the next round. My best guess is they won't get much beyond that, but it's farther than anyone expected them to get so that's good!

As for more relevant issues, everything is pretty much the same at work, though today was a really good day. We walked in the door planning on spending the day in the library working on our project, and ended up sitting in on a bunch of counseling sessions. Today was a special day--the third Wednesday of every month is PMTCT day, so all the women come with their babies and/or pregnancies and get counseled on how to avoid passing HIV on to their child, what family planning is, etc. Very interesting. Nrupa and I were really focused on the involvement of men in this day. I sat in on a group counseling session with 3 couples, 2 men who came as representatives of their wives, and 1 woman whom I think just sat down in a random chair and ended up in the session. One of the couples was an older man with only two teeth left in his whole mouth and a woman who looked to be about 20-30 years his junior. She was holding their child who was definitely less than 1 year old. Madoyi, the counselor, made sure I noticed the gender gap. Nevertheless, this man was the first to speak up when I asked (via Madoyi) why the men decided to come and if they thought that the information they were receiving was important.

After work, we played volleyball. It started as 4 muzungus. Well, 3 muzungus and our friend Alan who might as well be muzungu, and then turned into a full game of 5 on 5. It was so much fun, even though I suck at volleyball and all the Ugandans who joined us were really good (naturally). The ball, however, was extremely heavy and inflated too full, so now my forearms are covered in bruises. Oh well, it was worth it.

The evening ended with a transparent lizard crawling on my as I was finishing brushing my teeth, so now I'm trying to avoid going back to my room even though I'm really tired.

Also, the Safari is officially planned!!! Kenya here I come!