Thursday, July 4, 2013

Happy Fourth!

You guys, I seriously have THE best life. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure it's all really happening. It is. I am just living a dream life right now and I can't get enough of it.

Last weekend I went rafting on the Nile. Can I say that again? I went rafting on THE Nile River. You know that big river in Africa? Yeah. Rafted it. It was incredible!! We had a great guide, great team, great food, great weather, and great rapids. Plus, we totally rocked it at getting through those rapids. We only flipped our raft on the last one, and we all survived so it was fine. More than fine. Sooooo much fun!

Today we had a Fourth of July party. Probably the best one I've ever been to. I've been super bummed that I was missing out on the parades and boating and fireworks and s'mores happening in Burley, but we did pretty good here. The whole team spent hours cooking all the American food we could think of (hamburgers, hot dogs, fruit salad, potato salad, coleslaw, sweet potato fries, chips and salsa/guacamole, corn on the cob no bake cookies, and banana cream pie). We also invited all of our friends....which I've pretty much decided consists of the entire city of Mbale and its surrounding villages. We had about 60 people at our house tonight!! It was incredible. I seriously love all of those people so so much, and I don't think I've ever laughed so hard as I did with them tonight. So fun.

It was also fun to be able to embrace and share our American culture today, rather than Ugandan culture. I even wore jeans for the first time in almost two months to celebrate being an American today! We played American games, listened to American music, ate American food, spoke in American accents, and even educated some Ugandans on why this holiday is so important to us. We all ended up wearing red, white, and blue and some of our Ugandan friends even came dressed in patriotic colors (not sure if that was intentional or not). It was so fun to share this holiday that means so much to me with these people who have come to mean so much to me, and they were more than willing to celebrate with us.

I love Uganda, but living here has definitely made me appreciate America. I really love America. We have it so good. Grateful for days like today that help me stop and remember how blessed I am to live in such a wonderful country. God bless America.

I have so much more I could say about this last week, but I am mostly just on a high right now from my rafting and Fourth of July party. So we will leave it at this for now. Also, to add to the dream life I am having, I am going on an African safari tomorrow. I really must be dreaming right now.

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