back to emi

This week has been getting us back into a routine, wake up at 600 do p90x, shower,devotional, breakfast, emi group devotional, work, lunch, work, dinner, hangout, sleep, wake up.  It has been nice, harder to do p90x than when we first started, but i am still determined to do all 90 days!! and more! this weekend we are going to an orphanage that Jake(one of the interns) stayed at last time he came to Uganda.  I am excited to go to the orphanage and play with the kids! i am sure it will be a great experience. 

Rose, my roommate leaves today for Kenya! and she will be gone for 6 weeks! i am upset that she is leaving me, but i am really excited for her.  She is going to Kenya to help with disaster relief.  there is a large drought in kenya right now that have effected over 10 million people in the east africa region.  She is going to work with other engineers to try and find a way to get people water.  Please pray for her and the drought in kenya!

Day of Rest

Today we came back to the emi office and we are all exhausted!! We laid around all day and watched modern family until we got enough energy to go buy groceries.  We had to walk about 20 minutes, then we took a taxi to the grocery store.  The taxi is really a beat down van that they try to cram as many people in as possible.  I will try to take a picture and post it soon. Then we came back and vegged some more, ate dinner and did devotional.  I made spaghetti and sauce and kevin helped me make my own sauce with tomato paste and spices! so hopefully ill make one on my own sometime!

What a Busy Week!

So this past week has been crazy! We have been working on completing our masterplan so we could present it today.  I was in charge of putting the presentation together so i was nonstop yesterday and today.  I literally got three hours of sleep last night.  I was so rewarding to do the presentation today.  After all the hardwork we put into it, it was nice to see the client be so appreciative!  Now we will work on it for another 4 months in our office until we submit the completed project.

Lets see, what happened this week.  Well i did a percolation test on the site.  I got to do some more practical engineering experience.   Sunday we went to a great church in downtown Kampala and then hung out downtown until dinner where we went to a nice Indian restaurant.  The restaurant was really nice! but i must say i am not a fan of Indian food.

The rest of this week is really a blur, involving lots of powerpoint.  But it was really great to go aon a project trip and see more what emi is all about.  I am ready to go back to the office, i was just getting comfortable there, then we left.  Also, Rose is leaving for kenya for 6 weeks, so i got hang out her before she leaves.

I am tired, and we are watching Aladdin, and want to watch it! talk to you all later! 

We have to do work?

So the last few days have been very  busy.  We have been out on the site taking a lot of pictures, and back at the guesthouse we are helping the architects anyway we can.  My official job is the picture compiler, not the most glamorous job, but necessary.  I feel very inadequate.  All of these people are very talented.  But i am very happy that God has placed me here.  I am learning a lot and seeing what masterplanning is like in the real world.

I can fly!

sooo today i went in a 15 passenger cessna 208b!! It was amazing, one of the best experiences i have ever had!  I was amazing we flew all over Uganda, picking up missionaries  from rural areas.   It was crazy to look out the window and see all the remote villages in the middle of the plains.  It is the unreached peoples of the world and it is humbling to see.  The flight was about 4 hours long and we stopped at four places.  It is a dirt airstrip in the middle of nowhere, often with not a building in site.  One of the stops there were little kids that there only clothing was a tablecloth or just a shirt.  I was very sobering.

The flight was incredible! Uganda was absolutely gorgeous, hopefully i will be able to upload pictures sometime.   We met with the clients (MAF) yesterday and today was started the Master planning (architects).  Tomorrow we will start number crunching and AutoCAD.

MAF!

MAF stands for Mission Aviation Fellowship.  They are a christian group of pilots around the world that turned flying into a ministry.  In Uganda they own an airstrip and are hoping to expand and has asked EMI to help in the design.  We are on site for two weeks drafting up a proposal.  There are nine people on our team, 2 architects from england, an electrical engineer from egypt, architect from arizona, civil engineer from the uganda office, and 4 out of us 5 interns (we left Aaron behind).  It is very exciting to be on site and doing engineering.  Tomorrow we will meet with the clients and learn about what specifics they want.

Thank you all for your continual prayer and support!

Its Friday night!

I started reading Blue like Jazz last night and I have already read to page 87! I really like it.  It really challenges me on a lot of things.  One thing that i discovered was that I am too prideful to truely accept God's grace.  I need to really know and believe what complete grace is.  Another thing was I realized how shallow my relationship with God really is.  I keep working on the tasks(doing and saying the right things) instead of the relationship.

Every morning we start off the day with a devotion and prayer, which i love.  Then on Fridays we do worship as well.  Today we talked about being still.  And how it would seem coming to Africa would cause you to be "more still in Him", however you find stuff to busy yourself with. That is how i feel my first week has been, hopefully as i adjust to the culture i will find more time to be still.

Today at work we finished up the design of the trusses and worked on design spreadsheets.  Jake, Kevin, and I went to Cafe Rosa, an Italian place.  We got pizza and it was good! ironically i have been in Africa for 9 days and have had pizza 3 times. ( I didnt think there was pizza places in africa!).  Phil said that the best chocolate Ice  cream he had ever had was there, i had it, it was good, but definitely not the best chocolate icecream ever.  It is more like gelato. 

Still learning the lingo of a blog post, so sorry if this seems confusing and scatterbrained!

Katie

Catch up

Hello all.  So internet is off and on here, but it should be pretty consistent now.  We are only on our 4th day of work and i have already been staying late!  We have been given lots to do and it is awesome! i love how were now doing engineering.  We are doing a lot of AutoCAD but I have also been given the assignment to design a truss! Is it dorky that i am excited to do that?  I also realized how little i know about engineering, and i am really learning alot in these first few days.  I met with my mentor today.  Her name is Emily, she is the wife of the head structural engineer, Phil, and they are the intern advisers. We will be meeting weekly to do discipleship and study, and hangout. Last night the power went out and we ended up playing hearts and  settlers in the dark with flashlights.
The only negative thing is that i have been so busy i have not had much time to read!  i would like to be reading my bible more, that is definitely a prayer request.




I tried to upload pictures, but i do not think it worked.  The internet has trouble supporting that.  Also, i haven't taken very many pictures because anytime we go anywhere where its worth taking pictures they tell us to hide our cameras because they could get stolen. Hopefully we will be able to take more pictures soon!    

Welcome to Africa!

So I have been in Africa for a week and I have not had internet! We also have experienced times of no electricity and no running water.  But it has been great! Last week we had an orientation in Uganda.  We walked around the neighborhood and took a taxi into town.  Town was crazy! there were people and cars everywhere! it was a little overwhelming at first, but it was great to see the culture. We've been asked to not take pictures when there are locals because they may be offended, so i do not really have any pictures, but hopefully there will be soon.  We went about 2 hours away on Saturday to the construction management office.  They showed us three projects they were working on. It was really neat to see projects in action.

more to come soon thank you for being patient!