Finally in Kampala

I made it here! The flight was fairly typical and long, but it got me here.

We got into the hotel last night (which was like at  4 pm Kansas City time). I was exhausted so I went straight to bed.

We finally got to walk outside and see the city late this morning. It's gorgeous. In some ways it's sort of similar to Guatemala (where I've been twice before) in that it's underdeveloped, but there is much less American influence here than in Latin America. The US has had very few interests in the African continent than it did in Guatemala, so it is much more of a different land than Guatemala was.

The elevation here is 4000 feet, so it looks like I'll get some higher altitude training in. I can't run the first week because we're staying at a hotel in a more dangerous part of the city. But, next week when we start our home stay I should be able to run every day. I'll just make do with abs and push-ups for now.

There are a lot more trees than I was expecting. A lot of them look like Rafiki's tree in the Lion king. It is also pretty hilly. There is vegetation everywhere--it's very pretty. The buildings are very different and it's very crowded. I haven't seen another white person here outside of our group. We walked by an elementary school and about 200 kids ran up to the fence and shouted "bazinga" which means white person. All the people have been really friendly and often say hello.

The streets are INSANE. There are about as many motorcycles and bikes as their are cars and the roads don't have lanes which makes it a huge free-for-all. We got grazed by another car 3 times on the way to the bank to exchange money and the driver didn't think anything of it.

Well, the rest of the group is about to leave the internet cafe. Later!