Internet in Bukedea - St. Mary's Primary Teacher's College

Hello Everyone,

How are you today? I am great! Tony and I just learned our Peace Corps location for the next two years and currently we are visiting Bukedea, Uganda!

Bukedea is a small village on the map, probably under 1000 people. However it has a strong complex of 4 different school; a primary school, secondary school, Primary Teacher's College, and another primary school with the college students practice teaching. Also all the schools are Catholic school and there is a small convent of nuns that run a clinic and nursery school for children. (Last night we ate dinner with the nuns and watch Brazilian Soap Operas - Nuns having Fun!)

We have also seen our house! Super Exciting! Mainly because this house is about 2.5x the size of our last apartment (although that isn't saying a lot). But we have a large living room, kitchen (sort of), guest room, master bedroom that is really large, and an indoor bathroom.

Did you catch that! An indoor bathroom! It has a bathtub and European style toilet (not a squatting toilet)! However there is no running water so we have to fill the toilet each time but that is ok. It is so nice not to put on shoes and a headlamp to go outside to a latrine at night!

The house has lots of potential. Oh and it has electricity when the town has electricity (it's rationed). Also there are two water bore holes right near us. So all in all our house, schools, and water sources are within a 3 minute walk from us. We feel very fortunate.

So what is next for us and Peace Corps training? Well we have completed every part of training besides the final Language Proficiency Test. That will happen next week on Friday, Tony's birthday. Then we will say good bye to our host families with a Homestay Thank You Party on the 17th. On the 18th we will move ourselves to the capital, Kampala, and swear in as Peace Corps volunteers on April 21st!

I am happy and sad that Peace Corps training is almost done. The last two weeks of training have been hard because of projects, stress, and just being burned out overall. Although our training group is awesome. We have 29 people in our group and everyone of us have bonded and all that fun stuff. I will miss them but thankfully we are all going to stay connected. For example, we have already claimed Thanksgiving as the holiday Tony and I will host and almost every other holiday has been claimed.

Luckily for us too we will be living close to other volunteers. Bukedea is right in the middle of the towns of Mbale and Kumi. And to be honest, Mbale has a gorgeous national park and Mt. Elgon so it is a tourist attraction. So to have an escape we can quickly go to Mbale or Kumi which will be nice. Yesterday we ate lunch in Mbale and I had a cheeseburger and fries! A cheeseburger! It was so delicious! Although the bun was the size of a dinner roll =) Also we checked out one grocery store in town and found Twix Bars and NesQuick. (I am beginning to think Peace Corps service will be easier than I thought!)

Well more exploring of the area tomorrow and then back to Wakiso for the last week of training. I am happy with our site and that we have Internet in the middle of the village!

Love and Miss you all,
Stacey =)

PS My counterpart and principal seem awesome too!