Shabbat #2

Shavua tov!  My second Shabbat here was lovely and restful (a perfect time for recovery after Friday's excitement!), and another fascinating window into this community.  This week, I noticed certain things I missed during week 1, and I'm sure there is still so much I haven't caught yet!
First, walking in late to Kabbalat Shabbat to the only open seat being in the front, I noticed that the candles were already lit (it was still Kabbalat Shabbat, complete with musical accompaniment).  A bit confused, as I explicitly remembered the lighting happening after Kabbalat Shabbat and the storing of the instruments, I pondered this during the rest of the service until it was completed, at which time the rabbi called the women forth to say the bracha.  So, it seems, the order is this: the candles are lit before the service begins, the Kabbalat Shabbat service takes place, and then the blessing is said (after which maariv, the evening prayer, begins).  I am curious about this practice and will certainly ask the rabbi for the reason behind this practice, be it halachic, merely convenient, or something else entirely.
It was interesting as well to see the extent of the sermonizing in the rabbi's sermon.  This week's speech was about the influence one's wife can have (based on a commentary on this week's Torah portion which talks about a wife's good influence on her husband's choices), which he extended to one's friends and issues of drinking and marijuana.  And he proceeded to pick out certain people from the audience, saying things like "you--you probably have friends who smoke marijuana!" and "You need to be an influence for your husband!" The audience took this naturally, and it was refreshing in a certain way, though the thought of that occurring in any synagogue I've attended back home is...well I honestly couldn't imagine it!
I also noticed something interesting about the reading of the Torah portion--while the readers would use a chant which resembled the cadence of the trop (the defined tonal markings attached to each word in the Torah), they did not actually follow the trop.  I am curious to see if this is done as a rule, or merely as a stepping stone until the appropriate chants can be learned (or, understandably, if there are many other ritual challenges which must be faced before this one is tackled).  As the rabbi got a full rabbinical degree from a U.S. seminary (and seems generally well-versed in most major areas of Jewish practice and ritual, based on our conversations), I am close to certain he would have been exposed to the modes of Torah chanting, though he likely would be the only community member to have had such exposure.

And last of the things (I can remember right now) that I failed to mention last time--the haftarah (shorter portion from elsewhere in Tanakh read after the main Torah portion) is read in Luganda, not Hebrew.  This makes a lot of sense considering the Hebrew skill levels of most, though the rabbi does do a good job of explaining the key plot points and ideas of the story in the Torah portion before it is read.

I have yet to find out what the meaning of the inter-aliyah chant (which I mentioned last week) is, or how the choices of which psalms to say in Luganda were made, and who did all this impressive translating, but it is one of my week's goal's to find out!

All I can force from my brain at the moment--shavua tov!