"I own a goat"

We just found out that "I own a goat" translated to Luganda means "I am a virgin," and is therefore inappropriate for our survey! Oops. We have now changed this statement in our List Randomization to "I raise goats." Tomorrow, our enumerators head out to the field to see who makes the cut--and I head to the salon!

I am so excited to get my hair done, African-style! There will definitely be a picture posted as soon as it is complete. I have been warned that it will take 4-6 hours to do the small braids/extension all over and that it will be painful, but you only live once, right? One of my Ugandan friends, Peter, manages a local salon in Kamwocha, and he has recruited one of the hairdressers for me.

Things are pretty nuts here as we try to pull everything together for the big trip to the field tomorrow, but I wanted to write a quick entry. I have finalized permission to leave a little bit early to visit Kay in France, and I am sooo excited to see her, my extended French family, and eat a ton of delicious French bread! Unfortunately, it will still be pretty chilly in France in March, and my warmest clothing consists of a light Banana Republic zip-up hoodie, but I figure that it's a good excuse to purchase a cute new spring jacket :)

Kareem, my partner here in Uganda, flies back to the U.S. tonight to interview for an honors scholarship with the UVA economics department, so hopefully things will run smoothly in his absence. I assured him that I would be as anal about the enumeration logistics and paperwork as I am about my computer/Excel documents, and he seemed reassured. We all know that my Excel skills are off-the-charts! We have a conference call with Dean, the other PI on our project (apart from Julian) and the head of IPA, in ten minutes to decide how many respondents we should interview in each trading center--kind of a big decision, but I'm sure everything will work out just fine.

On a side note, somebody from SHAPE passed on a document about long-distance relationships and tips to make them work. One of the ideas was to "make babies" by going to MakeMeBabies.com, one of the creepier websites I've come across in my lifetime. You upload images of you and your significant other and it shows you what your baby will look like. So bizarre and entirely unnecessary to include on a suggestion list to make a long-distance relationship healthier! As they say on Curb Your Enthusiasm, "MF, WTF?" I think Kate Hudson did this in How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days...so if any of you are trying to totally freak out your boyfriend/girlfriend, try this! :P