HOME!

We made it home safe and sound after 36 hours of travel (in the economy class section of the plane this time). Somehow though, I was still able to sleep for about 20 hours...not sure how I'm ever going to train my body to be on the right time zone now. We had such a wonderful trip...I can't wait to upload and share my photos with you. From where I left you last, we had Charlene's baptism party....not really what you'd think of as a baptism party...there was a DJ, dancing, lots of food, and it lasted through the weee hours of the night. There were some fun surprises in the evening, Ryan was gifted with traditional Ugandan male formal wear, and I was given some beautiful fabric that we had made into a skirt and top. African culture is full of speeches, so I was asked to give a speech at the baptism, I gave it some real American flare by keeping it under 15 minutes. :) And then, the real kicker was at the end of Liz's speech she announced that Ryan and I were going to start the dancing for the night by dancing to the first song alone! Ack...what?? Good thing for swing dancing lessons... :)
We took a 3 day safari in the northwest region of Uganda. It was a pretty jaw dropping experience of getting to see elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, etc in the wild. We saw the rhinos while we were on foot...only about 20 feet away...a little intimidating to say the least. :) Good thing for dramamine...as the trip was pretty rough and bumpy.
We spent a day in the village...wow, they are living my Little House on the Prairie dream life! Although, I think it's much harder than I realize. There is no electricity or running water at all...and with that, no jobs, or money, or food other than what they grow. As the night grew dark, they had a gas lantern lit that we all sat around...about 30+ people came from their village to greet us and sit around and chat by the lantern. One little girl (about 2 years old) was soo scared of us, as we were the first white people she had ever seen. I felt so bad, and the more I tried to help the situation, the worse I think I made it. She screamed like I had never heard a child scream, and then wouldn't open her eyes the rest of the night. I was surprised by how many of the adults had never seen someone white before either, other than in a car driving by while they were "in town" (I put that in quotes because their closest town only consists of a little stand where they can by food, the same food that they grow in the village...and I think that's about it). Over and over, they just kept laughing and saying how shocked they were that we were in their village....kind of a weird feeling for us since we didn't think anything of it. My favorite, was how much EVERYONE in Uganda is excited about Obama being the next US president. We were greeted by one man in the village with, "We are so happy that we have people from Obama's nation visiting us." A club right by Liz's house changed it's name the night of the election to "Obama Club" and a butchery by the orphanage was called "At Obama Butchery". Everywhere we went, people commented about Obama. It's so nice to travel internationally and have people excited about our soon-to-be leader.
We had a wonderful time at Bitone (the orphanage). The children were so unbelievably talented, well-behaved, and family-like...I can't wait to share more about our time there with you via video clips. Thank you for the sheets and sending money for us to bring over to buy more items for them! We were able to buy sheets for all of the kids (their current beds just consisted of a foam mattress with no sheets at all...several kids often to one small mattress on the floor)...and we will be wiring them money this week for bunk beds, mosquito nets, more mattresses and blankets...THANK YOU!!!