Happy 50th Birthday Peace Corps

Right now, I'm sitting here in my awesome blue "Peace Corps Uganda" shirt, which I hope will be the first of many. For those you that don't know, Peace Corps celebrated it's 50th anniversary on March 1st. Just a refresher course, Peace Corps was started by JFK in the 60s with the intention to "promote world peace and friendship" through cultural exchange and understanding while providing services to countries in need.

In order to celebrate this very significant event (without it, I wouldn't be all the way over here!), we just completed a service project at a near by primary school. We completed a peace garden, painted classroom and dormitories, conducted a student mural, held teacher workshops, taught life skills to the students and played sports. I was on the sports front, which meant that I've spent the last 6 hours baking in the sun. Despite this fact, I managed to escape with minimal reddness thanks to Peace Corps sunscreen and a very handy hat. We ran a session on stretching and warm up drills for soccer, which is called football here and is by far the most popular sport in Uganda.

I can't tell you how amused not only the students today were, but anyone in general is, when they find out my name is Chelsea. It might not seem so strange to Americans, but any where else in the world, Chelsea is a very well known soccer team. Recently, my host mom asked me what my real name was. I had no idea what she could possibly mean, and apparently she thought that I was such a Chelsea soccer supporter that I had taken on the name in fan fever. It took me a while to convince her that my real birth name was in fact Chelsea. So, all the children clapped and clapped when I introduced myself.

Despite the muddy field that had no grass, the students really enjoyed the day of sports and physical activities. We taught them high knees, high kicks, lunges, jumping jacks, stretches and sprints. Considering we had to demonstrate all of these over and over again, I don't feel bad about skipping out on my run today and I'm sure I'll have some sore muscles. Although I know they had fun, I think they enjoyed "high 10s" we gave out at the end of each session. They would madly run around trying to high 5 all of us as many times as they could before they moved onto their next station.

Tonight will finish the celebration with a reception, dinner and dancing. Lots of Peace Corps volunteers have come from all over Uganda to be here, so it's been very exciting to meet the rest of the group. We've even gotten to meet a few of our future neighbors- the term neighbors being relative, meaning up to 2-3 hours away. We're all really looking forward to finding out our specific sites, which happens on Monday. It can't come any sooner!

Although I know we've learned so much during training and at our homestays, I must say I'm pretty tired of training. Mostly because you have no time to yourself. You spend 8am - 5pm at the conference center with all the 43 other trainees and staff, after which many people want to hang out. Then you go home, and while I adore my homestay family and really couldn't be happier, I feel guilty if I'm not spending time with them. Then I just pass out when it's finally time to get to bed. I'm just looking forward to having a little time on my own, being able to cook for myself and having my own space. We swear in as official volunteers in less than three weeks, so the end is in sight. That being said, I know after about a month at site, I'll miss the busyness and social aspect of training.

Off to shower and get ready for our first social event. The dress code is smart classy, whatever that means.