First week in Jinja!

Hello everyone Kate and Lihi here... The past week has been full of adventure, hard work, and mzungus. Early sunday morning we left Kampala and traveled to Jinja by bus. We arrived at Adrift Hostel surprised to see so many mzungus (white people). We were split into two different groups for rafting on the White Nile River. Kate was with Curry, Kevin, Matt, Aura, Jessie, Clairen and a South African guide named Greg. Lihi was with Zik, Andrea, Rachel, David, Camille and a Irish guide Graham. We were all very excited, but also a little nervous. We all went down class 3, 4, 5 rapids, the biggest and craziest one being ''Big Brother'' where most of us got tossed out as the rapid flipped the rafts over. Most of us were pretty frightened with the thrill of almost drowning, but we all made it out happy and safe.
Since then we've been staying at the Adrift Hostel which is literally on the Nile. Every night we get to watch the beautiful sunsets and star gaze.
We've have also been working through Adrift on an Environmental Conservation Project on land that they own but will later sell to the Jinja Community. We've also been seperated into 2 groups; One being Zik, Kate, Andrea, Matt, Jessie and Rachel and the other being Curry, Lihi, Kevin, David, Aura, Clairen and Camille. We switch everyday between two different projects and locations. One has been planting Mysopsis trees, which are quick growing trees that attract many local birds. Although it may not seem like it there is a huge deforestation problem here because many local village people tend to cut down the trees for many different reasons like houses, shops, firewood etc. The other project is building a walkway on an island to a future chimpanzee sanctuary.
We will be changing locations to work with Soft Power education where we will be painting a school and taking Swahili classes. We will be staying on site.

We're all safe and having fun, so parents don't worry.

Miss you and love you all.