Mmm...Coffee

As Eric so kindly pointed out, it's about time to update my blog! I knew I was fading off a bit on the posts, but life hasn't been super exciting and there wasn't anything I had a desperate need to write about!

I am sitting in a coffeeshop in Muyenga now called La Patisserie where I tasted the first good bread I've found in Kampala (in a chocolate pastry! Yum) and had my first Ugandan coffee. Delicious! Our office is pretty cramped and with a recent spike in temperatures, it was nice to get out of a stuffy room and sit in a peaceful coffeeshop while I work. It also happens to be close to a yoga class that I am going to hit in about an hour...sweet!

I spent the morning pre-testing the survey; I went through two full-length surveys with our field manager, Charity in a nearby district of Kampala. I administered both myself (although the second one required a translator), which was a lot more fun than just listening to the survey in Luganda and not understanding anything. I'm a bit concerned about the length of our survey--it is very long and a lot of the questions are somewhat repetitive. This makes me worry because if the enumerators or respondents are rushing to finish, their answers may not be accurate. We will be working to pare down the questions this week and have the survey finalized next week--training for the enumerators begins in 10 days! Everything is happening very quickly.

In general, I am enjoying everything but can't help being a little bit homesick. Thankfully, I'm very busy here with work, my thesis, yoga, and running, so I don't have too much time to think about it! Anyhow, it's back to the survey and potentially another pastry for me... :)