African sun at noon: wear sunscreen. Reapply.

Denim jackets, sleeveless hoodies, plaid, layers, Mr. Feeny: Boy Meets World is so wonderfully American. I let Eddie, my Rwandan neighbor at the hostel, borrow the first season and told him that that’s how we grew up. My life could use a laugh track sometimes. It was great to watch a few episodes last weekend with 3 other SIT students visiting Kimberly and I from Kampala.

We were up early Saturday morning and the Kabarole Tours van picked us up from the hostel and drove about an hour to a trail head. The hike was a little over two hours in the Rwenzori mountains to the “warm springs” which turned out to be sufficiently hot. As Kimberly put it: ‘in the US they make paths wind back and forth. In Uganda they just cut the trail straight up.’ There was a lot of walking up and down and around (as is to be expected) and the last thing I wanted when we got there was to get into hot water. So we chilled quite literally in the river and then attempted to get into the springs. There were three pools: the nicer and more removed pool for the men, one for the women and children, and a third deserted pool that our guide said “stopped working.” Our central location made us quite the show for the 50 or so male onlookers who finally disappeared toward lunchtime. It was once again amusing to be the tourist rather the one leading the tour and I watched our guides to see what “novelties” they pointed out to us. The chameleon changing color on my yellow shirt won me over on the hike back. We drove home, showered for twice as long as usual, and spent the next 24 hours being really mzungu.

Mountains of the Moon hotel is just .5km from the hostel but was worlds away from our bagged lunch of rolex (an omelet rolled into a chipati) on the rocks by the stream. It was nice to treat ourselves to a good meal and unwind. On Sunday morning we all woke up with sunburned backs and put the girls on a taxi back to Kampala. We met up with 2 other SIT students and Brother Leon who took us to lunch (and, as has become the norm for encounters with Holy Cross, drinks). 2 hotels with swimming pools in 2 days: did I accidentally leave Uganda?

Now that a good weekend of tourism is done, it’s time to get back to life in F/P.

Eddie returned the DVD set within 3 days. Since I sadly don’t have more, he’s back to watching Family Guy at night.