Today I am a mother of 3. My sis and her hubby took a much needed vacation to Maui and so Danny and I have become mom and dad. If they were going for convincing us to never have children then it is working! Chase is still crying (and has been for the last 3 hours) because I told him he can't play X-Box because he chucked his soccer ball at Bryce's face (bad aim, just hit him in the stomach) from about 5 ft away.
Anyway, wanted to post a couple of updates.
1. I've been married a year, yay us! I am trying to convince Danny to get serious about this marriage and combine blogs with me but I'm not being persuasive enough it seems. Seriously, we are averaging like 1 post every 6 months each.
2. School is out which means my paycheck has stopped and its time for me and Danny to live like college kids again, anyone want to invite us over for dinner?
3. In exactly 10 days we will be popping Loritabs in our mouths and enduring a 27 hr journey to Uganda!
Everything came together about a week ago and now our bank account balance is considerably lower as we are trying to get everything ready to go. While we played with the idea of bagging Uganda and saving our money to go backpack Europe or something I just couldn't do it. Danny was making fun of me that visiting a third world country (excuse me, developing country) is my dream vacation. Not sure why but there is something inside of me that pulls me to places where life is so tangible.
Now it is the hippy inside me's turn to talk. You know what has been bugging me lately? How removed I feel I am becoming and we as a culture are becoming. Perfect example, yesterday I told my nephews to go outside and play soccer and about 10 minutes later they were downstairs playing soccer on the X-Box. Another example, I just facebooked a friend to tell her Happy Birthday. Why didn't I call her or send her a card? Too hard. I have another friend who moved away from me that I miss big time but we haven't talked in months, just text, what up with that (you know who you are Stevey). I never shop in stores any more, granted shopping in Logan sucks, but I sit on the computer and search for what I want and it comes in the mail. I don't deal with people or even have to talk to them. I was trying to sew something and wasn't understanding the directions so I youtube'd it and watched someone else do it instead of reading it until I got it. If I have to wait for anything I am SO annoyed. I think I'm getting dumber.
Ya I know, boo capitalism and development and yay for getting in touch with our inner-selves, its obnoxious, forgive me. I'm just tired of being so climatized all the time. I want to feel sweaty and dirty. I want my schedule to get messed up. I want to be surprised by something that moves me. I want someone to question me and make me uncomfortable by forcing me to think about what I believe or what has always been my perspective on normal. That is why I have loved my experiences in third world countries, they have turned my reality upside down. I am so confused there that it takes me hours to complete something simple like buying shoes or figuring out how to call someone.
Maybe that is why there was a part of me that wanted to stay in Africa the last time I went. It felt simple. I talked to people, I wore whatever, I climbed mango trees and didn't wear shoes. It also helped that everyone thought I was awesome and wanted to talk to me and someone asked me if I was Brittaney Spears (I could see why he would get us mixed up).
However, the downer of my last trip to Africa was that, no matter how exciting and bizarre it was, there was no one there to laugh about it with me. It took me a really long time and a lot of effort and money to get there. I dreamed about it for, literally, years and so when I finally got there all I wanted to do was soak up every minute.
During the first week some of the other people in my organization and I took a van up to the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro do go on a hike. My group was slow and so I took off by myself. The hike was actually down hill and we were going to a waterfall. I ran the trail, overgrown with the fat wet leaves of banana trees, and finally spotted a clearing ahead. I slowed down and walked through the clearing. In front of me was one of the most spectacular sights of my life. A waterfall that I couldn't see the top of was tumbling down the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro, falling into a few pools before finally reaching the pool that was at my feet. The pool was full of large boulders. The sides of the mountain were green green, rich. As I stood there I felt like I lost my breath. I didn't know what to do. I turned around hoping someone else was coming to be in awe with me but I was all alone.
I took out my camera but the falls looked so bland through my lens that I put it back in my bag. Before I knew it my shoes were off and I was climbing up the rocks framing the waterfall, letting it splash onto my face. It was so grand that there was nothing to do but put my hands, feet, face, mouth, everything on it. It was the strangest feeling to be witnessing something extraordinary, amazing, beautiful to the millionth degree, and to have no one experiencing it with me. My group eventually caught up and joined me on my climb and a couple of us fell off the rocks into the pool and screamed and swam and that was great but the solitary feeling I had there left an imprint on me.
I am glad to have a big white guy joining me this time around. I am glad that whatever waterfall we find, be it a mountain gorilla or some amazing person or just a sight I've never seen before, that I can turn and smile and be understood by the person I love most in the world. Not that my life here does not provide me with any wonderment because when I slow down it does, I just know it and it makes sense.
Stay tuned for some pics if we can find any internet out there!
