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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Good morning, hand!

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This photo is dedicated to my neuro trauma love.

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It’s 1 AM and I’m starving and all I want is a rolex. A rolex is basically a chapati (an Indian flatbread popular in many east African countries) with two fried eggs, onion, cabbage, and tomato rolled up inside it. It sounds simple but it’s made with quality ingredients and oh my goodness it is a TASTE EXPLOSION. You can get one for 1000 Ugandan shillings, which is like 40 cents. 

I went to Irvine’s Global Village Festival! It was even better than last year. Foods were yummy, performances were awesome, and the vendors were really cool people. 

I met Laura Luxemburg, who founded Ssubi Hut and was there selling paper bead jewelry and fabric bags made by HIV-positive women in Uganda! As crazy random happenstance would have it, I was wearing my own paper beads and fabric bag! I looked like an assistant at her tent. 

I told her about my trip, she told me about her work. We exchanged contact information and now I’m supposed to see how she can get free medical supplies from UCLA’s massive piles of medical “waste,” the same way we did for our trip. Exciting times!

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Oh my gosh the rain was hilarious today. 

So I stroll out of class after 5 hours in the nursing dungeon, and it starts sprinkling. Uh oh. I could see the drops of water slowly taking over the previously incredibly dry sidewalk. I was like, “Okay, just walk fast and you’ll get home before it’s really raining.” Tralalalala. 10 seconds later, it was POURING RAIN. So I, in my bright purple sundress, ran to the nearest overhang, where about 5 other people were already standing. As I joined them, everyone was like, “OMG this is ridiculous isn’t this southern california we are so not prepared for this and you in your little sundress OMG!” It was like being welcomed into a club, and we all became best friends. 

The rain let up a bit after 10 minutes, so I started walking again. I still got wet, but I was happy about it. 

GPO… Ugandan children.

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First glimpse of Uganda! Love at first sight.

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I can’t even describe how madly I fell in love with the pound coins. I tried to take this picture so many times, and this one is the least blurry. Isaac Newton is my absolute favorite and these coins made me so sentimental.

So we started the trip with an 11-hour layover in London.

Well, technically, it started with 2 long hours of checking in at LAX, where each one of us became persona non grata as we checked in a total of 42 luggages—most of them overweight—filled with medical supplies and donated clothing. We were able to do 3 check-in luggages each, as a ~humanitarian privilege. 

But anyway, London was fabulous! We took the tube (!!!) from Paddington to Victoria, set off on a long walk and hit up some good spots in the limited time we had. Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster Abbey. We basically just took pictures and kept walking, getting a short glimpse and a sweet taste of London—just enough to convince me that I absolutely must come back.

We had fish and chips. My queued posts were pretty accurate, yo.

“There is not much talk about the clouds that are visible up here. No one seems to think it remarkable that somewhere above an ocean we are flying past a vast white candy-floss island that would have made a perfect seat for an angel or even God himself in a painting by Piero della Francesca. In the cabin, no one stands up to announce with requisite emphasis that if we look out the window, we will see that we are flying over a cloud, a matter that would have detained Leonardo and Poussin, Claude and Constable.”

-The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton