Also everyone that saw me came right up and introduced themselves and were very nice. There were two separate buildings. In the chapel the doors that usually lead out into the hallway like the meetinghouses in America lead outside to grass. It was fun to see the men preparing the sacrament outside with water bottles and bringing them into the church. As I was standing outside with one of the Elders just enjoying the warm weather one woman asked if I had finished viewing the exterior and was ready to go in. I agreed and she took me in to meet three girls who are sisters. Their names are Justine, Mary, and Jane. They were so nice and we were able to talk the remaining time until 10. They said they liked my nails, I had to tell them they were acrylic and not real. We talked about the differences of having all sisters and all brothers and of course we talked about dance. They knew 1 of the dances I will be learning while I am here and they are going to try to make it to our performance at the national theater.
I had never wanted to play piano more than yesterday since they had a keyboard, but no one played. The conductor would sing the first line of each hymn acapella and then everyone would join him and we would start from the beginning together. The spirit at church was so strong. It was fast and testimony meeting which made it amazing. Justine leaned over and asked it I was going to bear my testimony. I said I don't know and told her you should! After a few I decided I should go up since my heart was pounding out of my chest and I felt like she wanted me to. I have never been in a meeting where people constantly flood to the pulpit. Every time someone would finish and go to sit down at least one person would stand up and go up to speak next if not two. Luckily, I was able to squeeze in as the last person before the 2nd councilor wrapped up the meeting. As I sat back down next to Justine she thanked me for sharing and I could feel her sincerity.
Brian was coming back to pick me up around 11:30 so we only had a few minutes to exchange numbers, emails, Facebook names, and snap some more pictures. Justine thanked me again for sharing my testimony and then we said goodbye.
Brian picked me up and took me straight back to the hotel where everyone else in the group was ready to go to the National Theater Market. We walked around for about 2 1/2 hours buying different gifts and things for friends, family, and ourselves. I found the cutest bark cloth bookmarks for my students I teach for 1,000 UGS or .40 cents each. Everything was so beautiful I wanted to buy it all! It's funny that these vendors expect you to barter with them. I was successful at a few places, but when I was thinking about it more the more I didn't want to try and get a deal. The fact that I was buying hand carved wooden salad tongs for $5 USD and bohemian elephant pattern pants for about $7 USD made me realize that they could use the money more than me. The market is smaller than I expected. There were about 20 something shops all about the same size as my kitchen in Queens, which is a very tight small alley kitchen. The vendors were very fun to talk to while you walked around and looked at their merchandise. Two guys, where were brothers had created a walkway between their two shops. I spoke to one of them for a while, his name was Evans. I was happy to buy a small basket and t-shirt from them. Such nice people live here and have great stories.
We walked back from the market and got a little lost. What should have been a 10-15 minute walk ended up being about 45 minutes. We had to hurry and get ready to leave once we got back in order to make it on the bus by four. We all piled in the car and headed to the Ndere Center to have dinner and watch the Ndere Dance Troupe perform. We arrived about an hour early and was able to walk around the grounds and have a coke. Coke is super sweet here I love it! The pictures from the center are gorgeous. All I could think about was how I wanted to elope to the Ndere Center some day. Would be a beautiful place for a wedding or party of some kind. We had a BBQ chicken buffet for dinner and it was amazing. Most of the food we have been eating has been pretty starchy, like potatoes, squash, smashed plantains, rice, beans, etc, so having avocado, vegetables, and good BBQ chicken was incredible.
The performance was out of this world. I was literally on the edge of my seat for about 4 hours as they danced traditional Ugandan dances. One of which we are going to be learning this week. They were so entertaining and energetic! The troupe was started 30 years ago as a way to perform these traditional dances to help end the belief that the dances are evil and bad. At one point the head of the troupe had all the children in the audience come down. He did different dance moves with them and then had a little dance show off circle sorta thing. He would urge one person to go in and show us their best dance move as the other children were supposed to mimic it. The moves these children came up with was unbelievable. These little 3-5 year old girls would go in and do these booty shake and pop and lock unbelievable moves that had the audience going crazy. I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. Then he asked all the people with birthdays in the month of January to come down, which happened to be me, Deb, and Sarah. We had a chance to dance in the circle, which was a lot of fun.
As for the dances they were INCREDIBLE! My favorite was about love of course. The woman was dancing with all men and she would go about teasing all of them throughout most of the dance. The ending was beautiful as she found the one she wanted to be with and the moment they shared made me tear up a bit. It was beautiful choreography and gave me chills. They also had dances where guys were balanced drums on their heads while drumming them and kicking their legs up to their faces. Also girls balanced pots on top of their head some reaching up to nine at a time and walked up stairs with them still balancing. One dance had a ring of fire that a guy jumped through, another dance had women running from the men trying to catch them, and on and on. It was literally 4 hours long. Incredible. I wish I had their stamina.
After the performance we were exhausted and quickly came home to sleep. I actually fell asleep and was dreaming on the bus on the way home. A very productive, successful day. The best day of my trip so far.
Oh, except for the small fact that when I went to upload all of my pictures off of my camera I somehow messed up my iPhoto. I was able to upload half of the day's photos (church and the market and half of the Ndere Center) and successfully deleted them from my card only to have iPhoto "unexpectedly quit" and won't reopen. The pictures below are from my phone. Any ideas on how to open iPhoto without it crashing? Help! I'm desperate and really hope I didn't loose my photos with my new friends!
Chapel
Outside the church
Church (Chapel in the left building, classrooms and offices in the right)
January birthdays called down to dance with the kids
Ndere Dance Troupe
Ndere Dance Center
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