Sorry that I haven't blogged for a month! I appreciate all the "where'd you go?" and "how's your kitten?" questions I've heard about. It lets me know that people are actually reading this thing! =)
Mostly, I haven't blogged because nothing too exciting has happened. I've finally settled into life as usual, so maybe I'll start sharing more about what is "usual." I've been very busy at work, which is nice. I've gotten to work on office budgeting; organizing logistics for a small team that is coming in June; helping another project team finish, edit, and format their final report and appendices; communicate with incoming staff/volunteers on things like housing and work permits; visit potential apartments for our incoming folks; and even revamp our office lunch menu!
An interesting tidbit about my life is that our office employs a cook to make lunch for us five days a week, and we all sit around a big long table (in what used to be the garage) and eat lunch together at 1pm every day. Currently our office lunch menu looks like this: Monday: beans, rice, chapati (flat bread), avocado; Tuesday: spaghetti with ground beef/tomato sauce, cooked greens; Wednesday: mashed potatoes with meat sauce (chunks of beef), toast; Thursday: beans, rice, freshly-made beef samosas (many people's favorite day); Friday: soft tacos with all the fixings; and every day includes a big bowl of fruit for dessert (pineapple and sometimes banana, mango, or watermelon, depending on what's in season).
I've decided that what characterizes North American food more than any particular ingredient is VARIETY. We don't just eat European or even regional American foods; we eat Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern, and Ethiopian food. This variety can even be found at the local food court. At EMI, we've already altered our menu a little to add more "mzungu" (foreigner/Westerner) foods, but now I'm working with our cook and a couple others to expand our rotating menu schedule from 5 meals to around 15 meals, adding more mzungu foods as well as as wider variety of Ugandan dishes. Instead of having a weekly meal rotation, I hope to create a monthly food rotation, which will even include fish and chicken (maybe) once a month!
For some reason, chicken is by far the most expensive meat here. It's sad because that's about all I cook in the US, but I'm learning to make mostly vegetarian dishes at home since I often get beef at lunch. In fact, I just bought chicken at the grocery store yesterday - my first time ever in Uganda! Instead of splurging on chicken, I occasionally splurge on good cheese (also very expensive here).
On an unrelated note, which I thought of after I came up with the title of this blog, it is now grasshopper season. This means that you can buy fried grasshoppers along the road for a snack. People will even walk up to your car window to sell you a small bag-ful for only a few cents. They're actually not as bad as they sound. They pluck off the wings and legs first, so they're not really crunchy. It's kind of like eating greasy popcorn.... Still, not my snack of choice.
My cat is doing well and growing. She still drives me crazy a lot of the time, scratching and biting me, trying to eat all my food, and occasionally semi-destroying something in my house. She's now big enough to get up onto every surface, so I have to be more diligent about what I leave out on the counter or even on the stove. Within a couple seconds, she'll be eating my breakfast or my freshly-baked cake! She also likes to carry away small objects, so I've lost a couple things around the house that way. But she's still a nice companion to have around. My across-the-hall neighbors have a little girl, and a couple weeks ago they had some friends over with two more kids. The three of them were fascinated with the cat. I brought her to my doorway and let them pet her (although the boy just wanted to pull her tail and hit her). Eventually they followed her into my house and were trying to pet her and play with her. (I had to watch her closely to make sure she didn't start playing with her claws.) Later, they pounded on my glass door to get her attention - kind of like a kid at the aquarium - they didn't quite understand that loud noises would scare her away. Anyway, it was a nice chance to interact with the neighbors a little bit.
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