The Christmas Bookshelf
Take a guess...just do it, take a guess! I know, I know; you have no idea what you are suppose to be guessing about, but that is okay, it's all part of the game.
Okay. I will give you a hint: Think 'holidays'
Your getting nowhere, I know it, but that is okay because I am getting impatient too. Your just not working your brain enough so I will just tell you. You never will have guessed, but now you will all know.............
I am proud to announce that I am wearing my favorite Pumpkin Pie Holiday boxer shorts!!!
There I have admitted it. They are my favorite, and the day that I have to convert them from underpants to wash rags I will be thoroughly disappointed. At this point though they are still large and in charge and fully capable of giving me a festive mood anytime of the year. Therefore that brings me to wish all of you an incredibly HAPPY NEW YEAR! Along with that message I wish to send a very belated Labor Day, Veterans Day, Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas!
(The above was written 31st of December 2009)
'Cooking' with Susan
The thing I realized I miss most this Christmas about not being home (Portland, Oregon) is the typical dreary, cool winter. Snow is atypical; freezing rain or sleet is very possible, but that 38° rain is what is almost endearing about Portland winters..to me at least. Yeah snow would be nice once in awhile; in fact I can not recall a single Christmas spent with snow (sans Lake Tahoe which doesn’t really count), but there is something that excites me more about going outside with a sleeting rain, wishing it would snow, but just getting drenched as one runs from their car to grab a cup of coffee.
Being in Uganda, a equatorial African nation, one would assume that the chance Christmas is simply sunny and hot to be relatively high, as would I, yet this year felt oddly ‘Fall in Oregon’-like. I sincerely appreciated it. At night I needed to use a heavy multi-fiber blanket (and I guarantee that most of you would have still been sweating with a sheet on though—I’m acclimated) and in the morning there was a slight drizzle and not a sight of blue sky. I guess that is the closest I am going to get to an Oregon Christmas yeah? I’ll take it any day!
Yes! Golfing in Uganda over New Years Weekend
This past term has just flown by! I am amazed that the New Year has reached and we are already nearly 1/52nd of the way through this glorious-to-be 2010! Imagine this…after next week we will be 1/26th of the way through it!!! Double that amount of time (4 weeks for you non-mathematicians) and we are nearly 1/13th of the way through! Wait…okay, let us say that we have reached the end of the 23rd week of this year. That would place us somewhere in the beginning of June, approximately…uhh…23/52nd of the way through the year, and you know what is special about that time is I will be setting my feet back down on to American soil! I assure you all time will fly by and we’ll all be bear-hugging and giving each other the Pillsbury Doughboy® tickle! Some of you might also be thinking now “Hmm, June, that is a bit later than I thought. He (as in me—Daniel Jacob Koza) went to Uganda in February, began his service in April, it is suppose to be two years so why June??? The answer is below:
I have requested and have been approved for a year extension of my service in Uganda! I will be staying at my same college—the National Teachers’ College, Kaliro—continuing the work that I have been doing nearly the past 2 years. My time here has been exceptional in many capacities and I am excited to live here for one more year and continue my service to the community here in Kaliro, Uganda. Aside from various projects that I hope to see through to completion here in Kaliro I very much care for the people that I have met and come to be friends with here and I desire to have another year to continue these friendships. The stories and experiences shared between myself and the community are integral not only for my committed service here in Uganda but also for the strengthening of hearts and minds of all those involved. This decision to remain here for one more year was not sudden but has been a thought festering in my mind for the better half of this past year. With that said, I will be returning to the US sometime in early June and will be leaving to come back to Uganda sometime in early September (the exact dates TBD). My service would then officially end sometime around July 2011.
Nearly two years in to being in Uganda I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your kind and generous support of my efforts here in Uganda. Like most of you assume, each year has its fill of ups and downs and ‘nowhere-in-betweens’ but with out all of your support these past two years would have been far more difficult.
Like always I am open to any and all questions that you may have. Think of me as Encyclopedia Danielica if you must…though being rather limited in knowledge I might direct to some wikipedia page. Unless it is about me of course, there is no wikipedia page so maybe someone should start one? Nonetheless I will be more than excited to see and talk to as many of you as possible when I do indeed return to the US. I hope the best for all of you over the coming months and that all of our New Years can start off with a bang and we can all continue our quests for making a difference; whether those differences are in and for ourselves or directed outwards towards others, neither is most important as long as we are constantly striving to improve.
We all have to go yeah? I don't think Baghira would be too happy if he saw this though...
