please let this work now...

hurrah! how ironic - in Cuckfield I couldn't write on this page, and now i'm in the middle of Africa (literally) and it's working!!!
Olio tiya - that means hi and how are you, it's about all i've learnt so far! i can also say jebale (well done) and cow is ente....this language learning pattern seems to be echoing the way i learnt hungarian!!
Hope you guys are all ok - thank you for all the emails and sorry for being so lame at replying - my attempts at checking emails have all failed! the internet is so incredibly sloooow here it's not even funny. I think my patience will grow exponentially this year...i hope so, anyway!
I am settling in well so far, and they are keeping us busy - we start the day at 6am for our individual "quiet time" just between us and God, and have breakfast at 7.30 ....in theory! Class begins at 8am sharp (also in theory - usually breakfast is so late that we only start eating at 7.55 so it's rare to have everyone seated in the classroom before 8.15! so far we have learnt the things that this organisation, YWAM, values (kind of an expanded mission statement) and have also had 2 days' teaching on discipleship. It's been very interesting and i've learnt a lot, but the style of teaching is so different that it seems to take about 3 hours to make one point,with lots of sidetracking along the way, and we only have 3 1/2 hours of class every day, so it's very different from uni and quite tiring at times.
After lunch (usually beans or cabbage with either rice, potato/kumara or posho which is made from maize flour and is like very very stodgy semolina!) we have small group or work duty, which is usually tidying our little area - so far we have "slashed" the grass in the central garden by the classroom, swept the passages and paths, cleared the weeds from the passages behind the building and swept out the classroom - in half an hour it'll be time to mop and clean the toilet block. I'm glad we get time to do some manual work as well - i'd go mad if we had to study all day!! we also do games on a thursday - football in a skirt was quite a challenge (it had nothing to do with being unfit of course!!)
we're also supposed to keep a journal of what we learnt in each class and what God is challenging us with - we've had all week to do it but i haven't had time yet! usually we'll hand it in for marking every monday and get it back on friday to do over the weekend. i'm a bit scared about having other assignments, memory verses and writing songs and dramas - when on earth will we get the time?!!!
having said that, we have enjoyed free evenings so far, and have watched a few movies on peoples' laptops so i guess that will have to end for the next 5 months :-s

i think i deserve a clap for getting this far without mentioning the cows!!! there are 3 cows and a bull plus a zillion chickens and turkeys kept on the base, and Dr Tim and Jackie's family have some dogs, sheep and pigs too. we have a resident stray dog named Simba and there is a team from Tonga who are here to work with the street children on Jinja town, who have a cute little terrier called Musky - she's just a puppy and will chew anything...arms, toes, skirt...sometimes it's hard to walk around because she's always in the way! but i love her really - she's learning manners slowly!
anyway, back to the cows - all you farming/vet folk will be pleased to hear they are all BCS 2.75 - 3!! that is partly due to the fact that the grass is very lush, they are moved to a fresh patch several times a day as they are just tethered by a rope around their necks, and the best cow Angel aka Wendy gives around 8-10litres a day!!! Funnily enough the guy that looks after the farm is on the DTS with me, so we've had lots of chats about the different ways people treat cows - his family has a herd of 30, pretty huge when you think that a family with one cow is considered very rich! I will post photos very soon, assuming it will work...

so i should probably mention the people too...my roommate Katy is from Ohio, and we already chatted via email and facebook before we left home, plus bonding last week at the base in Cuckfield. She is lovely and has the most beautiful curly dark hair : ) we also got 2 new roomates yesterday who are going to be part-time staff on our course as well as working in another area of the base - they are local girls named Millie and Susan, and are both very nice and great fun too! Then we have 3 boys who are also fairly local, Nixon, Franco and "Robert Milk" (the cow guy in case you're feeling a bit slow!) and the full-time staff, Emma Mugaya the school leader, crazy Emma Msaki from Tanzania (Emma is a boy's name here!!! short for Emmanuel...and they think i'm strange for being called Alex, most people have never met a female Alex before. hmmm) Job and lovely Becky who picked us up from the airport. She has 2 sons, 10-year old Moses and 4-year old Matty - they are so lovely, they run up to us and hug us all the time, and Moses is so good that the cheekiest thing he does is flick water at you! i say we send all those nasty English kids out here and teach them manners!!
We also made friends with some others who aren't on our course - "Sarah Nigeria" who is studying Family Ministry and is totally crazy, a bit like Yasmine! "Sarah US" from New Mexico, who works with street girls, and the Tongan lot - one of the girls, Henna, is especially nice and friendly although they are all lovely and cooked Sunday lunch for us! They are also cooking a big fish+chip dinner tomorrow night and having a traditional Tongan evening with dinner and a dance display to raise money for their staff fees.

I think that's enough for now, anyway it's time to get ready for small group time and then work duty and i need the loo...oh yes, the room facilities are quite funny, the loo is basically a hole in the ground but it actually flushes! and our beds have sticks attached at each corner for the mozzie nets, so it feels like you're sleeping in a four-poster bed like a princess...cold showers have been tough to get used to but it's ok once you're already wet - at least it's always warm here and will never be freezing like that time in Coldharbour when the boiler broke - brrrr!

anyway, i will read all your comments and emails next time, bye for now!