Life's one big safari

This past weekend was hands down the best one here. Last Friday was women's day, so we all had the day off work and a 3-day weekend...we were going on an adventure. Everyone at home is on spring break heading to PCB or somewhere...I felt pretty awesome being in Uganda going on a safari instead. At around 10:00 we rolled out of town with 10 of us packed into an awesome van that you could sit on the top of, such a perfect safari vehicle. We didn't leave that early but it felt like it since thursday night we had been celebrating our trivia win for many many hours at the one night club here in town. Everyone was running on VERY little hours of sleep, but I guess excitement made up for it!

After several hours of typical Uganda driving...potholes and dirt roads (except a tourist stretch of road with actual lines down the middle?!??!)...we arrived at Murchinson. It's a national park right on the Nile and tons of wild animals are just walking around and chilling, and there is also an amazing waterfall, so I guess it's a pretty cool place.

Never a dull moment driving through Africa......

The first animal we saw.....a million African deer things. It was almost like being in Indiana.

Our first activity was a boat cruise down the Nile to see the water animals. The idea was to go downstream a while until the boat dropped us off, and we were supposed to hike up to the top of the waterfall. Obviously nothing goes as planned here....we did see tons of cool animals all down the Nile, but then all the sudden a big storm started rolling in.

 The middle of the Nile is not a great place to be stuck on a little boat during lightning and rain! The waves got too big for the boat to continue, so we were pulled over on the shore as the rain pelted inside and the boat rocked back and forth. We were all enjoying this way too much and the whole thing was hilarious. We were pretty slaphappy. Good thing we had all prepared for this journey by applying tons of sunscreen and stacking up on water bottles....weren't too prepared for the storm! The great thing about Africans is that they were really unphased by this whole thing. In America we would have all had to sign waivers and they would have turned around at the first sign of lightning, there would DEFINITELY not have been a hike to the top of the waterfall. But we just continued on as soon as we could, and then the motor on the boat started breaking so at times we were just floating, and then it would start up again on and off. EVENTUALLY we arrived to where we were supposed to start our hike. We were all totally soaked and it was about to get dark, but we definitely made the most of our hike. The waterfall was so crazy and the water was so powerful, like I felt like if I stuck my pinky finger in just part of it it would break off.

We made it to the top!!

After our adventure and getting sort of lost in the millions of curvy dirt roads throughout the park, we arrived at this super nice lodge to eat dinner, and it felt so good to change into dry clothes (shout out to Brittany for helping me out with that...forgot to bring literally any extra clothes). The lodge was so nice and outdoorsy and beautiful. We sat around the fire and waited for our food, and we were right by the water and the restaurant part of the lodge was made out of all these beautiful thatched roofs. I had like 4 cups of hot chocolate and ate lamb for dinner. TASTY. As if that wasn't enough I also very unclassily stole some leftover bread from a dirty table...we didn't pay enough to get bread dishes with our meal! Gotta do what you gotta do...

We left the lodge to go to our campsite, but only slept there for a few hours before getting up before the crack of dawn to catch the ferry back across the Nile to go on a game drive. All the cool animals come out earliest in the morning. The sunset was beautiful, and we rode all through the park sitting on top of the roof. It was a dream.

Lesson learned: don't let anyone in your van get out of the car when elephants are literally RIGHT there, because the start to charge!

So it was a pretty awesome and weekend. We got home midday on saturday and our driver dropped us off in town at the grocery store. I was super pumped that there was some cool yogurt there. I stacked up and was so distracted by visions of African animals and strawberry yogurt, and I left my wallet at the register. Didn't realize it until I had gotten home ten minutes later, I jumped on my bike and returned to the store...of course it was already gone. So RIP my driver's license, debit card, and large sum of cash.....that's a bit of a bummer but oh well, life goes on!

Later that night Hailey and Brittany treated the girls to a trip to the fair in town, and the all loved it and were so sweet and excited to get to go. We divided up and my team wanted to be called "team Jesus." So I was "Mama Jesus".....

We saw some animals (kinda sad to see them in such small cages after seeing animals roaming the Nile earlier that day!), the girls ate ice cream, went on some rides, and got their face painted. The face painting line was more like a crowd of 40 children around one face painter, so Tessa and I just asked him for some of his paint and did our girls on our own!

I think I almost love it here. I don't know if it's just because it's been so fun to be here the past few days, and today back at work was so good too. All of the new colors are finally passed out to the women for cutting, and soon enough the new fashions will be a reality! But I thoroughly enjoy life here. The power has been out literally 90% of the past week, I have had no gas to cook for the past month, I lost my wallet, I can't remember what it feels like to be really clean or have air conditioning or have someone actually wait on you at a restaurant. A week ago I wanted to cry because I was so sick of the third world but now I don't feel like it bothers me at all.

And God's just beaming down a big huge smile. I have a list 3 miles long of all these things I am thankful for and since I've started to only focus on that instead of things I don't have because I am here, I am so much more content. But I don't ever want to love Him only because of what he has given me or not given me in life...I do believe he wants good things for us and he exceeds our wildest dreams. But then all over the place here there is so much despair. A lady sitting in the dirt with a broken leg and flies buzzing around her just waiting to die. A mother with 5 kids whose husband has left her with nothing. So many slums. So much need. And I wonder sometimes if I was in their position, if I would still want to be in love with God. I remember the feeling in my own life of being so hurt in the past and losing things I loved, and that's the only feeling some people here ever know. There's a lot I don't understand. But I know his heart is oozing for the lady with the flies just as much as it is for me and he is always, always good. And the girls in our rescue home and the Imani women have all come from the worst backgrounds and they still have so much joy in their life now. I don't know, I don't understand why things seem so unfair but I do know that he is so full of love, and I ask him all these questions trying to figure things out, and his only answer is this huge smile back at me. "You don't have to understand, you'll never understand, you just have to feel my love and let it overflow."

Now to completely change the topic, I'm a badass. I totally ate this entire handful of white ants that the ladies had at work today. The first one very cautiously, and then I liked it enough to take a whole handful! I highly recommend, they taste like crunchy french fries.