Uganda Be Kidding Me: 10 things I learned this summer

I'm thinking "BuzzFeed Editor" would be a good fallback career if we run out of public and health in the world, so here is a summary of my summer in listicle form. Also CAN'T WAIT TO REUNITE WITH YOU ALL SO SOON!

1. "African" souvenirs are usually made in China or India, just like everything else in the world. All the colorful fabrics and crazy pants that white people on safari like to buy are about as Ugandan as French fries. Still, they are awesome fabrics/pants so can you really blame us for buying them and acting all cultured when we get back?

2. Peeing in a whole in the ground is something you can get used to. It's not really pleasant, but it gets the job done. I only had to use a latrine on days that we worked in the field, so I can't pretend to have had an authentic village experience. At night, I got a hot shower and a flushing toilet. So really we should all just appreciate indoor plumbing. 

3. On long layovers, you can totally leave the airport and get a bonus vacation! We did this in Amsterdam because we had 6 hours between flights so I'm pretty much an expert. We saw the outside of the Ann Frank house, ate frites, walked around the museum quarter, and wished we were as adorable as all the Dutch bikers. 

4. Knowing other languages is really cool. So I guess I am not that cool. Everyone I met in Uganda speaks like 5 languages and I could barely remember any words in Runyankore. I did meet a Burundian man, though, and exchanged like 2 sentences of French with him!!

5. Sexism. I just learned about sexism. Obvi I have seen this my whole life but it was different to observe as a foreigner. My first day working in the field, one of the health workers we partner with invited me to spend the night with him and it became pretty regular for men to ask if I was single or tell me they wanted an American wife, which is awkward. But the real sad thing was hearing from women about sexual abuse and domestic violence and just the general experience of being expected to garden, cook, clean, raise babies, make money, etc. sometimes with no help. And then it was sad to hear men talk about how they were expected to pay for everything but if you're poor you just feel disported and become an alcoholic and OK clearly not everyone does this but just for real why can't we all just work together and not force people to live and work and be a certain way just because of their sex??

6. Electricity is dangerous. My laptop charger taught me this lesson when it exploded and nearly took my head with it. Which reminds me that I need to check amazon for a new one...

7. I talk really loud and might be hearing impaired. Or Ugandans are just really soft spoken? I don't know if it's a consequence of having lots of cousins or something but I have discovered that I shout when people don't understand or acknowledge me speaking and it's super annoying and why do I have any friends? But then also I can never hear anything the first time so probably you should be nice to me I might be deaf. 

8. I always thought I was kind of low-maintenance, but it turns out I am super spoiled. I really struggled with the unreliable electricity and internet connection in Mbarara. One time I spent a whole work day reading Mockingjay and waiting for the power to come back on so I could use my laptop that can't hold a battery charge, and it was the worst thing ever. Also I'm bad at flies. I just don't like them, especially when I'm eating, and one time I even skipped lunch because I couldn't handle the flies in the village which is super weird for me because I LOVE eating.

9. At airports it really is important to get there early for your flight. And then once you are there, you should probably stay close to your gate so they don't close it while you are on the other side of the terminal being an idiot. I learned this lesson in Miami, but it all turned out OK because I got on a new flight and Marco Rubio was there which is basically a celebrity siting and I made friends by having a tide-to-go in my purse.

10.I really like travelling, but it is so great coming home. I am already planning my future trips: Paris to see Rachael, Poland to see the Pope, Uganda again to see my frands. But I definitely realized that I can never live anywhere but Michigan, at least not long term. I just missed everything too much!

Tokyo!

Which is in Japan, in case you're confused.

I hate goodbyes and had to do a lot of goodbye-ing the whole week. Monday I had lunch with my boss. Tuesday was an office going away party. Wednesday was the going away happy hour. Thursday I ran around to find my birth control before our trip, and Friday I had to officially say goodbye to my coworkers.

One of them surprised me with this picture frame! It's hard to tell but it's the entire ACS Staff with RBG! I think I'll use it as a way to humble brag in my new apartment. "Oh yes...in the course of my nonprofit work I got to meet two Supreme Court Justices...social justice is just soooOOOooooOO rewarding...blah blah blah."


Also on my last day we got burritos at my favorite burrito place in DC! I can't think of a better way to go out than that! Then walked to the White house and ate lunch there. Later my coworkers brought out wine, cheese, grapes and crackers and we had another little mini party. I was actually pretty busy though helping tie up loose ends, but that was a welcome distraction from all the people trying to hug and cry over me.

This is how goodbyes make me feel.

After work I went to CVS, went to Walmart, went to CVS again to get my birth control and finished packing. It was a pretty unceremonious exit to DC, but in the morning when I woke up, there were prostitutes outside! I'd never seen them before. And it was warm and raining so they were kind of like splashing around in the puddles in between trying to entice people. It could've been a lot sadder.

I flew to Toronto, met up with Zack and then we flew to Tokyo! It was a pretty uneventful flight and Zack even managed to sleep a little--good work Zack!

Zack wearing a bib to prove to the waitress we
understood her instructions

Then we had to make our way to our hotel, which, according to google maps, looked really difficult. It wasn't that difficult, but it did involved three separate trains. Also, I  asked for instructions to Yotsuya and it turns out we wanted to go to Yotsuya Sanchome. They're only about 3/4 of a mile apart, but we had all of our luggage, so we asked a police officer how to get to the right place and he showed us. But, in the course of asking him, I left my directions with him! It was a only a little bit of a bummer though because we knew we were close and the map kind of sucked anyway. BUT, when we got off the train at the right stop, the police officer was there on his bike and gave me back the directions! He biked to the next stop just to return basically useless directions. Very Japan.

 Then we got to the hotel, showered and went out to dinner. we were so tired we just stopped at the first restaurant that advertised an English menu. It turned out to be sukiyaki, which is sort of like what they do at Benihana, but smaller. The waitress made us wear bibs. At first I was not about that life, but it turned out to be a good plan because a lot of the fat/grease popped up and would've gotten on our clothes otherwise. It was really good and there was a group of families getting absolutely wasted next to us. They gave us some of their fried rice, and probably would've given us some shots, but we were too tired to stick around.

 We struggled to make it to 8:30pm before going to sleep, and ended up waking up at 5:45 and leaving by 6:15 the next morning. we were too early for Starbucks and had to walk around a little bit to find somewhere selling coffee. In the end it turned out to be okay that we woke up so early because we walked around this shrine in the middle of Tokyo called Meiji Jingu that's really beautiful, but would've been way too hot later in the day.

After walking around there we walked around Harajuku, which you might remember from Gwen Stefani. It was full of a lot of cool shops that were closed. We're probably going to go back when we're in Tokyo at the end of our trip.

After that we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which is really tall so you can get a good view of the city. And, unlike the Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree, it's free! And, we were also super into that it was air conditioned. It was also really nice because they labeled all the buildings we were looking at. This is a picture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building Number 2. And if you follow we on snapchat, which I mean, everyone should, you got to see a video from the top as well.

not Niagara at all

After that we walked around another park, which advertised "Niagara Falls Tokyo." We thought that was hilarious, and we were correct in expecting it to be underwhelming. It was. It's a fountain. A pretty decent fountain, but definitely just a fountain. Then we went and got lunch. It was actually a Chinese restaurant, which made it super difficult to order, because it's like Japanese translations of words I don't know. Finally the waitress just asked us "chicken or pork?" and brought us what she thought we wanted. It worked out.

Then we walked around Shinjuku and the department stores. There was even a Krispy Kreme. After that we were pretty much dying so we went back to the hotel and took a two hour nap. Then we woke up, went to Ginza, and had some pretty mediocre Thai food. We managed to stay up til 11, but that was only because of the nap.


Tuesday we went to the Edo Tokyo Museum to learn about earlyish Japanese history. I used my excellent Japanese skills to lie and say I'm a college student so I could get a 120 yen discount. I mean...I will be a student in like a month. So it's not really a lie. This is a part of Japan's history that I'm not sure familiar with. I've never really committed to keeping my Shogunates separate--I only know about the last one that collapse and made things change. The museum was interesting, but I still haven't really internalized the history at all. Oh well. I'll just watch the Last Samurai a few more times and hope that straightens me out.

The museum was really good for reminding me of CART though:

Here we have Taylor teaching some young students in Edo era Tokyo

Here we have Ashely helping a woman give birth.

The last sentence of this description shows that Ashely's techniques at this time probably would've hurt about as much as they helped. Get it together, Edo era Ashely.

This is a list of epidemics that hit Edo. I can't tell what they are, but they made me think of Teeners.

This is Zack on two ridiculous bicycles. 

One woman told him he was "the coolest" while I took his picture on this bike. What. 

This is Zack as a sumo wrestler.

After the museum we went to Asakusa, which is a more old-timey part of Tokyo. Mostly it was an incredibly touristy and crowded part of Tokyo. the main attraction there is Senso-ji, a buddhist shrine, surrounded by a ton of cheap, crowded shops selling stereotypical Japanese stuff. I was too hot to care a ton about it. If you follow me on instagram, which should be everyone except Taylor, you already saw a picture of the pagoda there. We ate lunch, walked around, and then got moving onto Akihabara.

you weren't supposed to take pictures, but I did!
I'm a real rebel.

Akihabara is called the "electric city" and has a ton of video game/electronic/sex shops. Definitely a weird vibe, but worth seeing. A lot of the video game and manga stuff was lost on me, but it was all unique and would be hard to find in a different city! We went into a 6 story sex shop, but I was only allowed on the first four floors and had to send Zack up to the top two. He said there wasn't much interesting except those fleshlights and a bunch of nervous dudes. I'll pass.

Then we wandered into an arcade. I think they're too whelming. There's music from like 19 different games, lights all over, and just generally too much going on Also, probably my lack of interest in video games makes them less interesting. But, we did play air hockey though and I beat Zack! Worth it.

Zack was so into his big toast.
And it was HUGE.

 After that we went to Ginza to see the imperial palace. First we needed a snack though so we stopped at this fancy French cafe. It was overpriced, but pretty worth it since we were so hot and tired. Also this ended up being our dinner, even if that wasn't the plan.

 Then we walked to the imperial palace and managed to find like five exits, and not a single entrance. I guess that makes sense. You don't want a bunch of ways to get into the castle?

Then we went home, collapsed and rested out feet. Tuesday we ended up walking around 32,000 steps. Which is like 14.5 miles. Props to Fitbit for keeping those stats. It takes an hour and a half to get to the airport so we had to wake up pretty early the next day anyway to get ready to come to Osaka.

While we were at the airport this absolutely wasted man walked up to us and tried starting up a conversation. He told us how we used to live in Finland with his wife. But that was too cold. So they moved to Japan. But then he decided to move to Melbourne for three months, and his wife wasn't happy with that. But then he came back after 10 days and was going to surprise her. But she said she wanted a divorce and that he friend was staying at their house so he shouldn't come back. Then he passed out on the seats and almost missed the flight.

Then when we landed we heard him yelling into his phone that he was going to "fuck someone up." So yeah, he's really our new best friend and it's sad we didn't get to know him well.

Now we're in Osaka with my grandparents and things will probably move a little slower. And that's not necessarily a bad thing!

Gringa Amiga

I went to Chile for the wine, and I ran into Amy Ketner!
(Amy, in case you forgot, is the one who loves Juan Pablo).
Amy lives in Santiago where she works in youth ministry and campus ministry for a Catholic church and nearby Jesuit elementary, middle, and high schools. She lives with three other volunteers and a pet cat named Pedro. She also speaks Spanish really well and really fast, which was fun and confusing to listen to.


In Chile, last Thursday was a holiday and schools had the day off. I think it was to commemorate some battle, but I'm not sure. I landed in Santiago Thursday morning and was met by this shining face and a lot of signs that I couldn't read.
The first day, we did a lot of activities. I met the roomies, ate a completo, drank Chilean beer, walked up Santa Lucia hill, and ate dinner with the host family of one of the roomies. The host family spoke little English, but they practiced some for their upcoming trip to Orlando with phrases like "this is a pencil" and obscenities not appropriate for this classy blog. I practiced Spanish phrases like "no espanol." We ate pizza, it was great.
Friday was a sandwich day, which means it was between a holiday and a weekend so it was another day off school! We took a day trip to Valparasio (AKA Valpo) which was so cool and is about an hour from Santiago by bus. Valpo is a port town and became really prosperous because of all the ships that had to stop there on their way around South America. Then the Panama Canal got built, and less ships come to Valpo now. Valpo is still beautiful, though, full of brightly colored homes built into hills that light up in the evening and twinkle off as night gets darker. There is also a lot of street art, exhibits A & B:






Saturday was another adventuresome day, but this time we stayed in Santiago. After breakfasting at noon on homemade bagels, we headed out to the mercado central (I put that in italics because it is another language). This was a really cool space that seemed to go on forever with fresh fruits and veggies like a farmers' market but also stalls for buying cleaning supplies and toilet paper and dry goods. We drank juice-smoothie-things and then walked across a beautiful park to the Pablo Neruda house. It was quirky and interesting and had an original Diego Rivera painting, which I liked because the DIA makes me think Rivera is from Detroit. Neruda was a communist and a big supporter of Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile who the U.S.ofA. helped to overthrow and replace with a dictator when we were in that phase (still in that phase?) where we try to control the whole world. Pinochet (the dictator) was a real jerk, so that ended badly. The house was restored by Neruda's lover-turned-wife after he died, and it was one of my favorite touristy activities that we did.


Saturday night we went out to a few bars Amy likes with her friend and I got to see Chilean night life, which goes on far too late for my liking.
Sunday was our relaxed day of hanging out on the porch and cooking together and sharing music. We also went to Amy's host family's house, which is right around the corner in the poblacion, which is what they call the poorer neighborhoods in Santiago. The family was nice to me even though I'm a dumb gringa and travel to Spanish speaking countries without knowing any Spanish. After hanging out with them we went to mass, roasted chesnuts over an open fire, and split a bottle of Chilean wine.
Monday was my last day, so we made the most of it by going up another hill (by fernicular, which is like an elavator/ski lift) and taking in the view of smog and mountains and the biggest city I've ever seen. There was a big old Mary on top of the hill and JP II said mass up there on his papal visit to Chile!

After the hike  down we ate chorianna, which is like chili cheese fries but with way better toppings, and drank pisco sours, which is the name of Amy's cat. I did a little souvenir shopping, we toured Amy's school, and then it was time to leave.
All-in-all, TeenerAdvisor gives Santiago a 5/5 star rating, in particular the accomadations at Amy's casa. And although saying goodbye was sad, Amy will be back in the USA this December (and will probably promptly leave to explore some other part of Latin America).
Now on to the next adventure: Uganda catch that plane!

#SBORLANDO2015

Our loyal readers have probably wondered of late, "What happened to CART? Why aren't they updating their blog? What will I read without them?"
I am here to answer your questions and to pressure the other 75% of our writing staff to pick up the slack a little bit (I'm looking at you Taylor).

So, what happened to us? Well, we all four have been busy with some pretty exciting lives since we last updated this blog, but one event in particular which all of CAR + the honorary B participated in was Spring Break 2015. Bobby and I are still students, so we get these nice little vacations throughout the year and are encouraged to spend them in sunny climates drinking and getting tan. Ashley and Rachael are working women, but they also get vacation time occasionally and if they don't use it all up on salmonella, they get to come to Florida, too! Taylor, unfortunately, is a teacher, and her spring break doesn't come until actual spring. This is a bummer.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Most Magical Place on Earth: Orlando!

Siesta Key Beach: #1 Beach

Right before we clubbed at club

We clubbed at Uncle Drew's, too

This is not actually us, but it's from the Book of Mormon song called "Orlando", so it seemed appropos

Lots of Driving and a Tale of Two Cities

Last week, I got to go to Philadelphia for a week long trip that was kind of an Alternative Spring Break for grown ups. It was hosted by the Sisters of Mercy, who are really cool nuns, and so all of the service we did was at Mercy ministries in Philly. I really didn't know what I had signed up for, but figured it would be a cool chance to see a new city, get a break from Detroit and my super stressful job, and tack on a trip to NYC while I was out East.
First, I had to go to my co-worker's wedding, because we are work friends and I got a real grown-up invitation and everything. I couldn't get drunk though, because I had to leave early and drive overnight to get to South Philly by Sunday morning. I napped in a parking lot in Pennsylvania, and it's the closest I've ever come to pulling an all-nighter, which is an experience I don't really recommend.
The trip was super fun, and I learned a lot about poverty and service and the intersections between government assistance and private charity work. These are all things that I get to learn about in Detroit, too, but it was a quick crash course and definitely a different setting with different issues and challenges. Detroit is very different from Philadelphia (and New York) and I think I prefer a city with a few less people and a little more open space and air. But cheesesteaks are really good.

I also got to learn that Philadelphia is across the Delaware River from Camden, NJ! Who knew? Unfortunately, I learned this too late to plan a visit to Kathleen, who lives in Camden. I did stop for gas in Princeton, NJ, though, and was fairly underwhelmed by the small part of campus I saw. Michigan is better.
After being in Philly Sunday-Friday, I packed up my dad's car Saturday morning and drove to Mary Walle in Harlem. I got to take the bridge that has been causing Chris Christie so many problems and learned that Harlem is part of Manhattan which is one of the bouroughs and also an island. This blog post is very educational for all the readers out there who might be as geographically inept as myself.
Mary has a roof deck where we got to skype call Amy Ketner, who is the CART-ay blog's favorite reader. We also had a view of Yankee Stadium (located in the Bronx across the river from Manhattan), and this would have been more exciting if the Yankees weren't the absolute worst.
Walle and I walked through Central Park

and across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Also it is apparently a thing in NYC/grown up life to have boozey brunch. By the name, we can tell that this is a wonderful thing, complete with botomless mimosas! The restaurant we went to had terrible service, but a great view of Times Square. Probably Tina Fey is somewhere down in that mass of people.

All in all, I had a really fun 10 days, but maybe I won't drive that far alone for a while. The radio stations kept changing and every time I found a new one it just played the same three songs the last station had played.
Soon, I will be visiting my cousins in Virginia, and hopefully when I figure out those times I can also plan a quick trip to see R+Z in Crystal Dizzle! Who knew I'm such a world (country) traveler?

Haha I Still Get a Spring Break

Ok after my long hiatus from the blog, here is the most recent update on my life.  As you all know thanks to my adorable postcards, I was in Florida for spring break last week.  Jillian and I planed down there on Thursday night.  It was -14 (non windchill) when we took off and 68 when we landed...just a minor difference.  My grandma picked us up and took us back to her house where my cousin, her 3 friends, and my aunt were already situated.  It was a little cramped in the two bedroom mobile home, but the good news was Jillian and I got the bedroom!  Everyone else crammed into the living room.

All the girls on Clearwater Beach

For the first few days, we went to various beaches.  One day we went to Clearwater which has really soft sand.  It was a little cool, but we persisted and laid out all day since it was our first day out of ice age Michigan.  At night, there are some fun tents with people selling stuff on the pier so we looked around those and some of the souvenir shops.  We also saw some street performers and that was pretty cool!

The guy jumped through this teeny hoop!

Basically every night we played games so that was fun!  I think I have an obsession with Mexican/Mystery/Marxican Train because I made people play it with me at least once a day.  Jillian had some sort of train super power because she won almost every game by a lot.  Another favorite nightly activity was shuffleboard!  I'm pretty good at it!  But sometimes I'm bad...

During some of the days we took bike rides.  One day we biked downtown and looked through the shops.  I've been in all of them lots of times so nothing was too exciting, but I always like looking at the chocolate wine and cute decorations and such.  Another day, we biked to Honeymoon Island.  I'm not really sure why it's called that, but it's just another beach that's close and easy to get to.  We even went in the ocean while we were there!  It was cold but refreshing.  A sad thing that happened though was I got really burnt.  I had to spray aloe with lidocaine on my back and legs for the rest of the trip.  I think I'm allergic to the sun :(

Sad Ashley

At night, we went back to Clearwater and went to this resort/nightclub/bar/live band stage thingy called Shephard's.  It was the only place we could go because two of Kenzie's (that's you Rachael!) friends were 19.  It was weird because they checked all our IDs and then the guy asked if we wanted to pay full price for cover and I was like uhh no?  So he made us pay 5 dollars instead of 7 so that's cool I guess.  There were lots of bachelor parties at the outside live band part.  They hung around us basically the entire night which was unfortunate because some of them were kinda boring, but they made up for making us listen to them by buying us drinks which were pretty pricey.  The inside club part included two 7/8 naked girls dancing on stage and lots of dancing.  There was also a very attractive bouncer who one of the girls in our group managed to exchange numbers with.

One of the highlights of the vacation was our trip to Busch Gardens.  Jillian's dad had free tickets so yay for not spending money! We went there on Tuesday which worked out great because there were no lines and the weather was perfect.  A weird thing that happened was right when we walked into the park, we ran into these girls who were on Kenzie's plane so they joined our wolf pack for the day.  Sadly, I don't like roller coasters so I was the mom a lot and held everyone's stuff while they went on.  I did go on the train and the cable cars though and then we finished the day off with the water rides and those were really fun and refreshing.

That night was Mardi Gras, so some of us went downtown.  Our intention was to play drag queen bingo, but since it was a special occasion, they didn't have it.  Luckily, it turns out that Mardi Gras is a pretty big deal in the little town of Dunedin, so we had fun anyways.  There was a parade and we managed to get some beads.  Then we talked to a few of the locals....one young guy who was really nice and telling us all the fun things to do and then another old man who was clearly high and crazy.  It was pretty fun just to see all the bizarre costumes and walk around the streets.

Mardi Gras friends

On Wednesday night, we went to this restaurant called Cody's which has peanuts you can throw on the floor and it was buy one get one free fajita night!  It was the 6 girls plus my grandma so we all paired up for our fajitas and she said she'd eat the leftovers.  Four of us also ordered buy one get one free margaritas.  Our intention was to each get one and split the cost.  However, our waitress interpreted it as us each wanting two (like we wanted to get wasted with my grandma??) and was really pissed when she had to throw away four margaritas.  Idk why she didn't just leave them with us at that point.  After dinner, we went to Derby Lanes, a dog race track.  We each made at least one bet, but sadly none of our dogs even placed.  Mine was called Jack's Tigress :)

Jack's Tigress: 8th Place! (out of 8)

Early Friday morning it was time for Jillian and I to return to the homeland.  The good news was that Bobby came up that day so at least I had something to look forward to.  We watched the Indiana game at Bdubs with some friendys and then had a game night where we played cranium and made playdoh!  Also, my phone went to the phone doctor and although I'm poor now, at least I don't have to screenshot all your snapchats and guess at the third answer for quizup!

Hope this makes up for my lack of bloggage in the last couple months :)  Miss you all!