arrival!

Whew! We made it. It is 7pm here on Monday (11am EST) night in the capital city of Uganda. We left JFK at 8pm on Saturday night and arrived in Kampala some 38 hours later... only to find that they failed to load our luggage onto our flight from London! Oy! Somehow, this doesn't feel like too big a deal. We have all of our camera equipment, our computer and, most importantly, our malaria medication. There were about 30 other people who were in the same predicament. Some had stowed their malaria pills under the plane and were stressing out!

We are going to keep this short tonight. Basically we want our families to know we are here and we are safe, but since all of our power converters for the computer are in the luggage, we don't want to use up too much energy. The next flight in from London is Wednesday morning. If our luggage comes in then, we will travel north to Gulu with the volunteer organization, Invisible Children. But if not, we will have to wait here in the smoky, congested, crazy(!)capital (which has been pretty amazing) until Friday.

Since we lost our bags, we had to decide whether to head straight to the hotel (The Blue Mango) or to try to head to town and buy some clothes. Neither of us had any spare underwear, socks, flip flops... We were still in our winter clothes. We had the taxi driver drop us off at the local market (where, among the tens of thousands of people, we were the only who seemed to be Westerners) which we found out was called the "Nashville Exchange", and left looking like natives. I am now wearing a loose-fitting, blue African print short-sleeve shirt, my own jeans, and plastic shower sandals. Aimee wears a moo-moo that will fit perfectly should she ever get pregnant with triplets.

Thanks to Karen and Edward for your one-day London itinerary (we had a 12 hour layover there). We hit all the spots -- Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden (where we enjoyed some delicious mulled wine), Spitalsfield market, Spitz restaurant, Westminster, Trafalgar square, the Thames, Big Ben... It was a full day and I have the painful blisters to prove it!

So we are in the lovely Blue Mango now, settling down for a relaxing evening after a long, beautiful (!!) nap. We are refreshed and looking forward to adventures to come.

Just a note to family. Cell phone access may be a problem for a few days. It's more of a hassle than we were told it would be. So check this site for updates. As long as we are here in Kampala, e-mail will be easy and we will check everyday.

Alright, time for a delicious meal and a well-deserved beverage. We love you all and we will write soon with a richer description of this amazing place!

yours-
Aimee and Kevin