Mityana Reflections

I've been in Mityana 4 days now, and to be totally honest, I am so ready to come back to Kampala! Of course, I will stay as long as needed to help out with the survey and organizing, but I cannot remember the last time I felt like such an outsider. Every time I leave the hotel, literally all of the people on the road stop what they are doing to look at me. Not to mention, the children who are super cute until they run up to me and say "Money!" in English. I just want to go for a run, or even a walk to buy airtime, in peace. I never thought I could feel so out of place since I usually make friends very easily. I thought I got attention as a muzungu in Kampala, but that was nothing compared to this!

There's good news and bad news with not wanting to leave the hotel--good news is that it makes it easier to focus on my thesis. The bad news is that the power outages here are awful and I keep getting stuck for 2-3 hour periods with an uncharged laptop. How annoying! However, today (apart from survey sorting) is starting off strong without any power outages yet :)

My daily routine here has pretty much been waking up around 6, seeing the survey team off, talking to the bf before he goes to sleep, and then starting thesis work/survey stuff around 10. I visited the field the first few days, but yesterday and today are too far away for me to realistically go out there and it's easier to meet with the team in the evening.

I also set my schedule for spring quarter--it's funny how these things sneak up on you! I wasn't able to limit my classes to Tues/Thurs, but I did get away with only one discussion on Fridays. I ended up going for better classes even though it means class every day. Poor me! It should be a great quarter, complete with real showers and lots of yoga classes!

Anyway, I am going to get cranking on some thesis regressions now. When technology is functioning, I am having an obscene amount of fun playing with my econometric models. I may be changed in terms of my mature wordly perspectives, but this econ nerd isn't going anywhere!