Another Grand Adventure!

Hello friends! I just thought I would write a quick note while I am waiting at Schipol airport in Amsterdam! I finally now how to say it, thanks to my good friends Emily and Levi who are also a fan of this place! It is "skip" "pole". I was a little shocked that I didn't know that already! So this trip is going to be full of all sorts of random connections and I hope it all turns out to be one amazing trip! This will be the 5th time I have been to Uganda. When people ask where I am going, they seem shocked, but to me it just feels like something normal. I have been blessed to be able to go, despite having an almost non-existent income. Thanks to a job doing Epic training and working at caribou during my mph, I was able to return! I will be gone for just under six weeks. For the first two weeks, Dennis and Isaac, two undergraduate students that were with me last year will be along for the ride. Then my mom will be coming from August 1-20. Shes going to work on some teaching projects and we will hopefully be able to spend more quality time at the orphanages, especially one called Little Angels. It is a place with around 18 kids. They went through a tragedy over Christmas last year. One of the kids was killed by lightning while visiting relatives of the the man who runs the orphanage in a village. It made me a little mad. Seriously, have they not been through enough? The childn there are so sweet and the house mother, Judith gets very excited to see us. She really loves the kids but I think it is getting to be difficult for max to pay her and she is away from her family. Last year there were times she didn't get paid for months at a time but she stayed anyways because she knew somebody needs to care for the kids. I hope that the past year was better for all of them! I do not have a very strict itinerary this trip and since it is a longer one, I have time to make decisions and change plans and still get everything done. I will definitely be working with Angella to deliver medicines and check up on all the orphanages. I addition we are trying to see about helping a little girl with a complicated history get the proper surgeries to correct an issues that should have been fixed at birth. The kids in one village have requested to be tested for HIV so one of our jobs will be to investigate the need and feasibility of testing. I also have a friend named Barrett who is from Uganda but was doing his mph with me. He is working on a project that I hope to help out with at least a little bit. There really are a lot of directions that we can go and it will just be a matter of taking it one day at a time and one step at a time! I will be less busy this time because I don't have classes to complete like last time so I should be much better about updates! I hope you enjoy reading along! If you have any questions feel free to ask them!