Dear Faithful Blog Readers: Thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me as I have chronicled my Uganda Projects- travels there with my Wilkes Pharmacy Students, my travels to teach the Ugandan Pharmacy Students, and my work with Ugandan Pharmacists in the USA in 2015 and since the beginning back in 2011.  Below are some interesting stats that WordPress put together that I thought you might like to see. I’m especially impressed with about 10,000 views this year!!

I also have more to share with you about happenings in 2015 so I’m going to be posting a few blog entries over the next few weeks to finish up 2015. My next trip to Uganda is in April 2016 and I’ll be posting about that before you know it.

To catch you up, Pamela Blessed, the Ugandan Pharmacist who is also a faculty member at Makerere University is still in the USA completing her Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD project on the development and testing of a pharmaceutical-grade exipient from Banana (i.e. she is creating a new starch that can be used to make drug tablets).  The pictures below are of the Pharmacy Practice Christmas Party which Pamela attended with me. It was a breakfast held in a large mansion Inn called the Stegmaier Mansion and it is beautifully decorated with many antiques and was especially impressive with the Holiday Decor. Our department has a tradition of having a really funny gift exchange. Instead of purchasing a gift for a specific person, we all just bring a gift and put them in one big pile. Then we pick numbers from a bag and then choose one gift from the pile in the order of our numbers with #1 going first.  The best number is the last number because when it comes your turn to choose, you can steal a present from someone else rather than picking from the pile if you want. If your present is stolen, then you get to go get another one. No one opens the gifts until the end so people end up stealing gifts from one another without even knowing what is in it.  There are lots of laughs with this gifting game. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

Jen, in the red sweater, is trying to hide her gift. This one turned out to be the most coveted gift and must have been stolen back and forth about 10 times. I’m not sure who finally got it but I believe there might have been chocolate candy in the triangle gift on top.

Some people have gifts already but we are all waiting until everyone has one to open them

Pamela and KarenBeth with our gifts, prior to opening them. I got comfy blanket and pillow with owls on it from Erica Hoot (ha-ha- hoot-owls, get it.) By the way, she is coming to Uganda with me in April. Pamela got a gift certificate to a Japenese Restaurant.

Dana’s gift was in a huge box- someone else chose it first and then she “stole” it from someone. When she finally got to open it, it was a “squatty potty”. We all had a good laugh! check out this link if you want to learn what it is and be sure to watch the Unicorn Icecream video: http://www.squattypotty.com

Dana loves her squatty potty but I’m not sure who she’s pointing at- maybe the person she “stole” it from.

Kim is getting in the spirit by putting the poisetta bow on her head

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.