Chalk it up to a new experience

Time sure does fly by. I have already been in Iganga for more than half my stay! I am definitely missing everyone but falling in love with these kids. I'll try my best here to fill in some of the more interesting things happening around here since I lasted blogged.
1) I lived through bungee jumping. I am so glad I did it but the experience is over way to quickly. There could definitely be more bungee jumping in my future (as long as there's water beneath me)
2) I spent the night at Musana again. Such a fun experience: there always seems to be a little dancing, singing, and photo shoots.
3) It's supposed to be rainy season here but it's been incredibly hot and we need rain for our farm land. Please pray for that.
4) We found out one of our kids had been stealing from us...this turned into a bad situation that is now back under control. We all love this kid, so I hope things work out. Please pray for this boy as well.
5) The kids are loving the monkey bars, but they're all showing me their blistered hands :(
They'll toughen up soon. The swing set hasn't had much use yet because we need our builder to come back and fix a couple of issues. The kids are very excited about it though. However, I think I'm going to have to recement both the monkey bars and swing set again because the kids played on them to soon. It's hard to be upset about it though because they were just so excited.
6) Our volunteer house is back down to 6 of us but we add a new guy, Brian next week.
7) I went to my first ever rugby match that ended up being a scrimmage because the other team didn't show up. Afterwards we played some pick-up basketball with some locals. It was fun except for the whole dirt court with flip flops and jeans...needless to say I fell once lol. One weird thing people say around here is "sorry" whenever you do something clumsy or have an accident. They don't ask "are you ok" just simply "sorry" I want to teach them the correct context to use sorry lol. I get told sorry a lot lol.
8)We no longer have a puppy. We had to give it away because we don't have the time to take care of it. I don't think we're meant to have animals here as pets.
9) I'm becoming quite the good baker at our cafe. My specialties include brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and cakes. All made from scratch. I know most of you think I can't cook but I really believe in the philosophy that anyone can cook if they follow a recipe. I've been helping out quite a bit with the cafe. Anything from cleaning to cooking to serving. Casa's prepared me well for what I've been doing. I really could use some quality time with the kids though...It's been a crazy couple days at the cafe and I haven't seen the kids since Monday night :(
10) The kids are having their final exams this week and go on holiday next Friday. It makes me sad because there will be a lot of kids I won't get to see again before I leave, but there will also be a good core group staying that I'll really get to connect with :)
11) If you've made it this far thanks for reading because here comes the good story...
As I was just finishing up eating lunch today at the cafe, 2 nicely dressed Ugandan women came into our cafe. They sat down and we greeted them and made small talk. Then out of nowhere they were like "We are from Kampala from the Immigration office we need to see your passports and work permits." We tried to convince them that we weren't working there just volunteering, but they weren' t having any of it. Our passports were at our house so they said they would take us to get them in their car they brought. Next thing we know me and another volunteer Annie are being told to get into a big white van with bars on the windows that is filled with a bunch of Indian people that work bellow our restaurant. It was a big scene to see muzungus getting taken away! Next we start hearing phrases like "there will be repercussions for your actions." "You can't lie to us about why you're here." "Your going to the police station. You've been arrested. We're going to go take your statement. If we find you guilty of the charges, you'll be deported immediately" At this point me and this other girl were trying not to laugh because the situation was very serious but so ridiculous. They really had no reason to be taking us besides that we didn't have our passports on us. So we went to jail for a couple hours, had our ugandan friends bring us our passports and makes some special calls for us to some "high ups in the ugandan world" Some head guy came called us his girlfriends and got us out. I'm pretty sure some of the Indians are getting deported. So after we get out we head back to the cafe to finish our cold lunch when we get a call from Elijah, the man who got us out. He tells us to get out of the cafe because the officers were going to comeback and demand for our passports. As we start heading down our steps we run into the immigration officer. Morris talks to him a bit and the man said he'd be back in an hour. If we didnt' give him our passports the same thing will happen again tomorrow. We'll we didn't wait around for him to come back. Now tomorrow Annie and I are on house arrest because they know of all the places that we work/volunteer at. It has been 3 days since I've seen the kids. It completely bums me out but I"m going to try and steal a visit early tomorrow morning :) I guess there's not much I can do but just keep going with the flow until things blow over.

Lastly, because I was on house arrest tonight I took all my fake hair out. I now feel as though I have no hair at all!

Until next time...bye for now