Getting ready to go....

Hello Everyone,

I guess this is officially my first post of my trip to Uganda this semester. I have never really blogged before, so we'll see how this turns out, but it seems to be the easiest way to keep in touch with a lot of people at once.

I think most of you know the basic synopsis of what I am doing, but here it is, just to cover all my bases:
I will be spending my entire first semester (August 26-December 17) in the country of Uganda, Africa. Uganda is located right on the Equator towards the eastern side of Africa, but from what I hear it is beautiful weather there most of the time and beautiful landscape. I also hear that there is not near as much humidity in Uganda as there is in Iowa, so that will be a welcome change as well. Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, is located on the southern side of Uganda and the Nile runs right through the eastern side of the country. I will probably have the opportunity to raft down the Nile, which, from what I am told, is quite an experience, so I'll see if I can snap a couple of pictures along the way as well.
The semester is not all fun and games, though. While there I will be a student of Uganda Christian University(http://www.ucu.ac.ug/). This is a newer University, only ten years old, but it already has more than 6,000 students, I believe. I will be taking 16 credits worth of classes including courses about African literature, politics, history, intro to missions, and a Faith and Action course where we will be doing more discussion of our time in Uganda and more things in the surrounding community.
There were two different emphases for me to pick from on this program and I chose the one known as the "Intercultural Missions and Ministry" emphasis. This emphasis is designed more for those who are looking at the possibility of full-time missions some day, which I am, so I felt that it would fit well, and hopefully help me to feel out whether this is what I am called to or not.
One major part of choosing this emphasis is living with a host family for the entire semester, rather than the typical two week time period of the regular emphasis. This should be a very challenging aspect of the program, but hopefully a very rewarding one as well. Along with this comes washing my clothes in a bucket which will also be a new experience, I'll try to send some pictures of that as well, I'm sure they should be quite laughable at first.
There are many more things I could say, but I think I've said enough for now, and I'll save the rest for later when I've actually experienced it and can tell the actual stories.

Feel free to leave comments and send emails throughout the semester. I can't guarantee and response to any of it as the Internet connection will probably be quite sketchy there, but hearing from you will be great anyways...

Until then....