"Christmas spirit" and travelling to Kabale

So, I guess it's time for an update. I can now see that it's much more difficult to uphold a blog than I thought it was. Two respect-points to Voe and all the other "bubblegum-bloggers" (my sister translated this word. I don't if it is a real one) in our vast country. This brings them up to a total of two points...

Christmas is getting close in Uganda as well as in Norway, even though the surroundings beg to differ. The sun is shining more than ever, and I have even gotten a bit of a sunburn over the weekend. The Christmas spirit is not exactly thick in the air... I have heard some rumours that Hald-students around the world are trying to create some christmas spirit with Christmas baking, advent calendars++, so, being the extremely traditional guy I am, thought that I would - not - join this trend. I think Håkon is suffering a bit having me as his team-mate. Håkon is a real country boy from Voss, and soforth he really likes the traditional part of Christmas. Luckily, Håkon is also a very creative man, so he has made himself a charming little advent calendar. On this, Håkon checks off every day of December, so now we at least have one way of knowing when it is Christmas Eve... ;) (a picture of the calendar is found in the previous blog post)


But there is one thing that I have in common with most other Hald-students these days: homesickness. Christmas is a time best spent with your family, and I imagine I will have some problems trying to celebrate it 7000 kmilometers away from the people that I love the most. I have discovered that the best way of fighting your problems is sometimes just to run away from them. I did exactly this last thursday...


At 5:30 on thursday afternoon I decided I did not want to just sit around and do nothing this weekend. So I ran to the bus office in Lira and ordered a bus ticket to Kampala for the same evening. At 1AM I arrived in the capital where misses Hanedalen and Jensen were nice enough to let me borrow their couch for the night. The next morning I turned my nose (does this expression work in English?) southwest. 8 hours later (a total of 13 hours of busriding in one day...) I stepped out into the fresh air of Kabale city center. This is the home of the Hald-students Lilleberg and Haugen, and this weekend they would be the victims of a surprise visit from yours truly.


The girls were very happy to receive a visitor (mostly because this meant that they could postpone working on their paper for a few more days), and we had a wonderful weekend. Some of the ingredients of this weekend were a boat ride on Lake Bunyonyi, visiting the pygmies (a people that is supposed to be really short grown, but turned out to be not so short...), a ridiculously steep hill going up to the lake, warm shower, haircut, pizza, belated birthday-applecake and - of course - The Lion King :D (you can find some pictures from the weekend in the previous blog post)




In honour of Synne and Hanne, who hosted me over the weekend, I will finish this blog post with a poem (these girls finish all their blog posts with a poem):


Synne and Hanne, you girls are so nice - I love you more than beans and rice ;)