Madeline asked some of her friends from gymnastics to sleep over on Saturday night. Jennifer and the girls stayed up late and watched movies. Cathy had arranged for Jennifer to call home to Uganda but, because of the time difference, she would have to wake up in the middle of the night to call at the time suggested. It turned out it wasn't a problem because the girls were up late anyway. Jennifer was able to call and talk to her mom and her siblings. It sounded like all was well at home and hopefully she told her mom that she was well cared for here.

July 21

From Debby

Jennifer is so busy going on field trips during the week with school, I wasn't sure how she would feel about going out on Friday night. We decided to drive a short distance to Rio in Gaithersburg where there are shops and restaurants and a beautiful lake. I thought there would be live music outdoors but it turned to be the wrong night.

We had fun shopping in Target and I bought Jennifer and Madeline some small items that they both needed. We took a walk near the lake - it was a warm evening so a lot of people were out.

It was getting late and we knew that we would have to wait to get into the restaurants so we went home and had a light dinner.

July 19

From Debby

Jennifer had left some things at Cathy's house, including her computer, so Elizabeth picked Jennifer up at school on Tuesday and she spent the night at Cathy's house.

After school on Wednesday, we took a look at Jennifer's computer and determined that she didn't have her own email address. My husband was able to set her up with one through his business so her friends at school and in Philadelphia can email her directly. She was really happy as I showed her how to enter names in her electronic address book and send and receive email.

July 14

From Debby

After a brief visit back to Philadelphia, Jennifer finally arrived at our house on Friday night. She was introduced to our family and shown around the house. Jennifer really liked the basement which has a ping-pong table, a pinball machine, and a Ms. PacMan game.

We played a quick game of ping-pong, and immediately had a case of the giggles. Soon after that, we showed Jennifer her room so she could unpack her things and settle in. The next day, we all slept pretty late. I had to wake Jennifer up and rush her out the door because we had to take Madeline's brother Ryan to a tennis match. Ryan is 11 years old, and as Jennifer would soon find out, plays a lot of tennis.

On Sunday, I took Jennifer to the grocery store so she could pick out a few things she liked for lunch and dinner. She bought some cabbage and later showed me how to cook it. We had some of Jennifer's friends whom she met at Green Acres school come over for dinner. The girls had a great time dancing to music in the basement afterward.

July 8

Entry as told to Cathy by Jennifer. Jennifer has been attending an English immersion summer program at Washington International School.

I love school because I made a lot of new friends and I love the schoolwork, and also the trips we take every day. In the mornings, we do a little bit of writing and reading, and you have to think about what you read and write an answer. The first one we read was about the president of the United States, Aba something (Abraham Lincoln). We learned that he was a lawyer and then he became president, and that somebody shot him. We learned about that. Then we visited the place where there is a statue of him. We learned about all the U.S. presidents.

In my class are two girls named Donna and Eleanor. (Donna is from Kazakhstan and Eleanor is from Belgium). They are such good girls. At lunch we sit together and we are just talking English together because the teacher asks us to speak very clearly. Kate, my teacher, she is so great. When I read something I don’t understand she will explain it to me. Tristan, who helps at the school, is so much fun. We go into the gym and play basketball or soccer. After we finish working in class, and the teachers give us five minutes to do what we want, we play a game called Hangman. You think of a word, and everybody guesses the letters. I’m good at that game. It’s good because it teaches you how to write the word. The teacher, Kate, she has a game called Scrabble, and you get seven letters and you have to make a word with them. Natasha is the head of the school. She is so good and nice to me.

We take a lot of trips. We went to the Indian museum and the National Cathedral. We went to Chinatown, where we saw the buildings and stores. Me and my teacher, we bought a hamburger. You know I love hamburger. I ate it and walked around. The teacher, she took the children in a store to look around. I bought a T-shirt that was full of colors and had Washington D.C. on it. We went bowling. I had never been bowling before. When I first saw it, I think I was so surprised. My teacher showed me how to hold the ball. You know that ball is big and hard to hold it with one hand, and so I tried to hold it and just tried to throw it and knock down the pins.