Contacting Us

There have been a few questions before we leave about contacting Stacey and I while we are abroad and we haven't been able to answer everyone directly so I thought I would post an entry to help explain while a slight bout of insomnia prevents me from sleeping. When we leave for Peace Corps there is actually a two month home stay/training period before we start our assignment. This will take place just north of Kampala and will be a temporary stop. Since it is not a permanent stay and mailing can take a couple weeks Peace Corps provides an address at their main office for our mail when we are training. Because we won't know how much communication we will have about when we move or where our next address is we are going to have people funnel mail through our parents.

We will stay in contact with them as well as possible and they will have our temporary address. We will also let them know when they need to hold mail while we move so letters aren't on hold for 6 months when we don't have time to go to Kampala to pick them up. Depending on our scenario we may or may not give out our address later, but there are a couple things you can do to help with this process.

Please number your letters to us so we can inquire if there seems to be a gap in communications. Also add dates so we can roughly check how long it takes for delivery and we can give you a warning about how long it may take. If you want to send us something besides a letter, put it in a mailing bag. Mailing bags are less likely to be searched than boxes which means things are less likely to be stolen. If mailing seems to difficult, use the computer!

On this blog you can post comments or get our email addresses to talk to us directly. We also have the facebook group and we have skype as well. Skype is under Stacey's name and you can do a search for her in the program after you download it. We do not know how frequently we will have internet, but we will update as often as possible.

Who wants to take a 15 hour flight?

Yesterday we started receiving information about our staging!

What is staging? Well, before Peace Corps volunteers leave the US they all meet in a major city to have a brief orientation. You go over Peace Corps information, expectations, and receive any vaccinations you may need. It’s also to make sure everyone gets there.

We were excited to learn that we will be staging in Philadelphia! So on February 8th we will fly to Philadelphia and go through staging. Then at 2AM on the 10th we will take a bus to New York City and fly to Johannesburg, South Africa. Does anyone want to take a 15 hour flight? After that we will take a 4 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda.

It was great to hear about our staging. We are getting closer to our Peace Corps service and it’s awesome!

Is there butter in Uganda?

Back in December, Tony and I were moving out of our apartment. As we were packing I looked through my recipe box for any recipes I wanted to take with us to Uganda.

While looking over the ingredients for Ham Pie I asked Tony if there was butter in Uganda. Now, I know this sounded naïve even when I was saying it. I am sure they have butter in Uganda.

A more appropriate question would have been how often is butter available? What about vegetable shortening to make the crust? How about shredded Swiss cheese for the filling? I have doubts that I will be able to find Swiss cheese. Oh well. We will learn new recipes in Uganda and that sounds pretty tasty too.

This experience has been one of many fun packing events. It’s like going on a vacation and not knowing what the weather will be like or what you will do; except quantified.