June 17th, 2007

I attended my first Ugandan wedding yesterday. My counterpart from my organization was getting married which was awesome because I actually know him pretty well. I had an outfit made for it, which I’ll be posting the pictures of very soon. It takes forever to upload pictures so that’s why there haven’t been any up yet. All in all, it was a good time. The basics of the wedding were the same—speeches, food, cake, gifts, etc.—although the set-up was a little different. The activities were more of a performance of the bride and groom. There was a gift-giving ceremony when everyone lined up to personally hand his or her gift to the couple. For the wedding, I was given the task of helping to cut the cake. One difference there is that they have many cakes in addition to the main cake. They cut and serve the main layered cake to the guests at the reception and then the rest of the cakes they wrap up and give out to certain people at the wedding. My organization received one of the cakes—so we’ll be eating it at work one of these days.

One more exciting thing…I felt my first earthquake here. I was sitting in my room when I felt my bed start to shake a little—almost as if a train was going by. There’s no train here…so I was a little confused and then I realized it must be a baby earthquake. Anyway, it was the first one I’ve ever remembered experiencing. I don’t think it’s a normal occurrence here, so it shouldn’t be a concern. But I have to admit I was a little surprised and confused.