hot shower!

so, as most, if not all of you know, i'm not a girl. still, the pleasure of a hot shower is far from lost on me, and this morning was luscious. i'm in mbale again, and a whole lot has happened since my last post.

firstly, i'm a PCV now. i'm no longer a trainee, but a real volunteer. i think it's a silly distinction, and i think that trainee is a bit of a belittling name. regardless, it's nice to be at site, and living la dolce vita.

someone mentioned to me that they only just figured out what my blog's title meant. for those who haven't, my last name is desai, the title is not a horrific error in spelling.

the last couple of weeks of training were tedious, tumultous, sad, and anxious. we all wanted to get to site, but i'm pretty sure we didn't want to leave one another. yeah, i know, sappy as hell. anyways, it hasn't been so lonely yet, but i've only spent a few nights at site.

but rishi, you ask, didn't you guys swear in over a week ago? shouldn't you have been at site for nine days now?

well, i'm glad you asked. swearing in went great, brett and i gave speeches, both of which seemed to go over well. unfortunately, our college had car trouble, and couldn't pick us up that night. they picked us up the next day (free night in kampala = nothing to complain about), and started dropping the six of us associated with the college off at our respective sites. unfortunatley, we ran late, so i ended up sleeping at the college that night. the following night, i slept at my site finally! pictures to come later. then, i needed to buy a mattress, so i went to mbale with my college's truck (don't worry peace corps, i wasn't driving) and picked up a bunch of stuff. as fate once again came between my lovely new home and my lovely old self, we got caught in a massive thunderstorm, and i just crashed at the college again. the following night, i finally got to sleep at my place again, this time with a mattress!!!

[mom and dad, stop reading here]
sadly, i wasn't the only one with such a plan. yes, that's right, i have somewhere between 20 and 40 roommates. they live in the rafters. i call them 'the boys', but you would probably know them better as bats. now, i don't mind bats. they're loud as hell, but i can sleep through the noise. they stay up in the roof, i stay down below, everything's kosher. except that they shit all over the place. i can't keep anything against my walls, because every morning there's a pound of bat guano lining the corners. i mean seriously fellas, if you want to live with me, have the courtesy to shit outside. so all of my things in my bedroom and kitchen are being stored in island formation in the middle of the rooms. hopefully i can get my place fumigated, but that would mean not staying at my place for another few weeks. and i like my place. oh uganda.

[you can come back now]

i got a sweet bike. it's a y-frame full sus mountain bike with shimano parts. pretty slick if i say so myself. i rode it to soroti the other day, which is about 35k from my house. it wouldn't have been so hard if the last 10 weren't through a thunderstorm. man, i bitch way too much. okay, enough complaining.

so, just as my friends and family seem to be reading all of the other uganda pcv blogs, it seems that some of the other pcv friends and family are reading mine. firstly, i would like to tell you that your friends/spouses/children/sibblings/tap-dancing instructors are some of the best people i've ever met. hats off to you for making them that way, then conveniently sending them to me. feel free to drop me a line sometime, human contact is a wonderful thing.

i made contact with the mysterious dutch cheese maker. it's gonna be game time soon enough.

i'm in the process of writing letters to the people who have sent me mail recently. thanks to annie and zach for the latest batch. and thanks to everyone who said that there is mail on the way, i assure you that the mail system here is far less efficient than they told you when you sent it out.

peace out folks, i just realized that i forgot to check out of my hotel.

awanyunos bobo!