About Emily Hamsher

Emily's Posts:

Can’t Stop Living

June 30th, 2008 by ehamsher

Good afternoon to everyone!
Time is quickly passing, I can’t believe I fly home tomorrow. I spent most of the weekend in Kampala at more craft markets and exploring the city. Just when I get the hang of getting myself around the big busy city it is time to say goodbye. Enjoyed a weekend relaxing with the friends I have made here. It is the people and the kindness that I will miss most here. The Ugandans do not doubt themselves when it comes to helping others, and I think that is something that we could all benefit from learning. If [...]

Posted in Uganda

The Last Day

June 27th, 2008 by ehamsher

Hello all! Hope you’re having a good Friday. Not too much to update about, I finished my last day of teaching this afternoon. I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. We spent today making friendship bracelets with some string that I brought from home and using up the remainder of the markers and crayons that survived the month on coloring pages. Gen and I tried to explain to the kids that we wouldn’t be coming back on Monday, but I’m not sure how many understood. It was a typical Friday with children following us down the streets as [...]

Posted in Uganda

Safari Weekend

June 26th, 2008 by ehamsher

Greetings from Kampala! I decided I needed some alone time this afternoon, so after school I hopped on a taxi in to the city. I spent the afternoon walking through the craft markets and enjoying a sunny Wednesday!
So, as I left off yesterday, this past weekend was spent at Murchison Falls on safari. The trip began early Saturday morning with the bumpiest six hour drive I’ve ever experienced. I developed a lump on the top of my head from being tossed up in the air as we went through all the pot holes on the Ugandan dirt roads. Just so [...]

Posted in Uganda

A night out and a Ugandan BBQ

June 25th, 2008 by ehamsher

Greetings! Hope everyone had a good weekend, my apologies for a lack of updates. Internet in Kampala was down Saturday, so I wasn’t able to connect before the safari. It’s been a very busy past couple of days, and I only have 20 minutes until I need to leave to get back for dinner, so I’ll try my best to catch you up.
Friday evening Allie, Tama and I all headed in to Kampala for a night out. Tama and I stopped by the Red Chilli Hostel and campgrounds to drop off our stuff for the weekend since we would be [...]

Posted in Uganda

Connect the Dots

June 20th, 2008 by ehamsher

Osiibye otya nno! (Good evening to you)
Hope everyone is doing well. I don’t have too much to update, it has been a fairly uneventful past couple of days. Just wanted to touch base while I was on the net. Classes have been going well at Our Lady. We spent the last two days doing connect the dots with our P2’s and P3’s, and writing short stories with our P4 class. The kids loved the dot to dots, despite some trouble grasping the idea that you had to connect the dots in numerical order to actually make a picture. We had [...]

Posted in Uganda

Elizabeth House

June 17th, 2008 by ehamsher

It’s a pleasant afternoon here in Mukono today, despite the constant smoke from the burning garbage. Gen and I had both of our P-2 and P-3 classes today, so it was a busy morning. We tried to work on interviewing by having the kids draw a picture of the person sitting next to them and asking them four fairly simple questions. We haven’t gone through them all yet, but I think we got a lot of pictures, not a lot of faces, and few answers. You take what you can get. Atleast they’re drawing and using some creativity. I would [...]

Posted in Uganda

Paddle Through

June 15th, 2008 by ehamsher

Good morning all, and Happy Fathers Day to all of you dads. I’m currently sitting in Kampala at Garden City, so the frustration that usually comes with internet use in Mukono has been washed away by the more up to date (in Ugandan standards) internet cafe here.
I am beat up and sore from rafting yesterday, but still feeling the exhilaration. I have done a handful of rafting trips before in WV, but the whitewater we faced yesterday on the Nile was brutal. We hit a good deal of Class 4 and Class 5 rapids, two of which flipped our raft, [...]

Posted in Uganda

This is a cat.

June 12th, 2008 by ehamsher

Hello all! It has taken me almost an hour to check a few e-mails, so this will be brief, my apologies. The past few days have been pretty typical. Classes have been going well, Gen and I got assigned a fourth grade class yesterday, which we will probably only have about once a week. The class is HUGE. I counted 75 smooshed together little heads in the tiny classroom. Lessons have been going well, but still a bit frustrating. The low reading and writing levels of the kids are frustrating. We asked our 2nd and 3rd graders to write a [...]

Posted in Uganda

17 minutes…. really!?!

June 10th, 2008 by ehamsher

Hello friends! My apologies again for a delay in an update. The internet in Mukono did not come back on until this morning, and it has been verryyy slow today. I’ve still yet to check my university e-mail account because for some reason it takes much longer to load than anything else. 17 minutes to be exact!!
I left off on a rainy day in Kampala. The weather Saturday unfortunately did not improve too much. We decided to face the downpour after spending a bit of time using the internet, so needless to say we all got completely soaked and fairly [...]

Posted in Uganda

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

June 7th, 2008 by ehamsher

Hello all! Sorry for a delay in the updates, the internet in Mukono has been down for the past couple of days. I am currently sitting in a slowww internet cafe in Kampala waiting out a rainstorm. It is rainy season in Uganda right now, and when it rains, it POURS. I began my teaching at Our Lady Junior School Thursday after meeting with the headmistress Wednesday morning. I am paired together with another volunteer, Gen, from Australia. I am pleased with the pairing because of the large size of my school’s particular classes. We were given two classes of [...]

Posted in Uganda

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