We’re very sorry for the late post to everyone that reads our blog the second it posts (aka our parents who have already read it before we even tell them it’s posted). We ran out of our wifi and have to buy more, and Haleigh didn’t have service for like 12 hours but no worries she posted it first thing in the morning. So without further ado…

“I’ve never imagined I would be sitting in a living room with Haleigh and Amber” -Kyrillos

After a long awaited 28 hours, we finally received Kyrillos at 5:30 in the morning. Amber and Haleigh are very excited to have Kyrillos here and, more importantly, to have one more person to contribute to the blog.

Fellow comrades, hello hello. My name is Kyrillos, a rising senior at WashU majoring in neuroscience and a fellow of LFR. I’d like to thank the academy, VTCA, and Amber and Haleigh for having me! Truthfully, I’m so blessed for this experience and looking forward to spending the next several weeks here in Uganda!

The morning presented us with housekeeping challenges. Unfortunately, Kyrillos’s “good luck” proved to be useless with setting up the brita water filter and helping reboot the WiFi. Kyrillos bought two faucet filters from the United States hoping that one of them could work to help with water filtration. One hour and a bunch of tape later, we were left with what we started with - a faucet with no filter and the need to boil tap water before using it. Saddened he couldn’t put his neuroscience major to good use to fix the WiFi or the water filter, Kyrillos settled into bed and wished Haleigh and Amber goodnight at 2 pm.

However, Kyrillos was kind enough to check an extra bag full of goodies for us- it felt like Christmas morning! We now are in possession of tissues, mac and cheese, and electrolyte packets among other things (like the presence of Kyrillos… he totally didn’t write this).

We made Mac and Cheese for lunch. For extra protein, we decided to garnish our bowls with chia seeds- it was quite yummy. Amber was appalled to discover that Haleigh eats her Mac and cheese with a spoon, and this is where having a third fellow really came in handy... until Kyrillos responded with, “please don’t get me involved.”

It’s okay though, twenty minutes later we caught him using a fork to eat his share.

Throughout the day, we got some work done and called Zach and Peter about final training logistics. As kyrillos pointed out, everyone here is “laissez-faire”, but Jacob and Devir did eventually come pick us up for our meeting to welcome Kyrillos.

We saw chickens on the way over— did you know Kyrillos used to raise chickens? We didn’t either! Learning something new every day. When we got to Mukono Resort Hotel, there was a graduation party happening where our meeting was supposed to occur. We recognized some songs by Jason Derulo and had a mini dance party with our VTCA colleagues.

After good conversation, good food, and a good meeting, we headed back home to wind down before another big day tomorrow.

Amber was about to get over her fear of killing bugs last night until she realized she was a good foot and a half away from the ceiling. She then tried to spray the bug with bug spray, only for it to rain back down and get all over her face because she tried to spray it vertically.