I took a bit of a blogging hiatus this month, and I needed it. There are times when I just need to be present so that I can process what I’m feeling. With the turmoil in South Sudan this last month, I really needed to spend time processing and praying, journaling instead of blogging. Thank you for your patience.
And now, I’ll catch you up a bit.
We arrived in Kampala on December 17th and had a few days to unwind from travel, scrub months of dirt and sweat off ourselves, and then ease into the holidays. I’ll start here…with cappuccino!
On our first Saturday, the Hendersons took our whole team paintballing with their family to celebrate their youngest son’s birthday (McCain is on the far left)…
I was homesick on Christmas day. I missed everyone, and my heart broke a little whenever my family would send me pictures from family dinners. I missed them. However, this first Christmas spent in Africa was one of the most stress-free holiday celebrations I’ve had in years. We had no big plans, only one place to go, and no stress of holiday shopping.
On Christmas day, Blaise and I got up and exchanged gifts for one another (because we wanted to keep at least one tradition)…he got sketch pads and I got an Amazon gift card for my Kindle.
Then we, along with our housemates, Laura and Christina, enjoyed a big Christmas breakfast of breakfast tacos and Christmas Blend coffee…
And later on in the afternoon, when we were finally ready to move again, we met up with our whole team at the Hendersons’ house for a waffle and ice cream dinner (yum) and some dancing competition on their xBox. So. Much. Fun.
On January 4th, Blaise celebrated his 29th birthday (welcome to the final year of your 20s), and Neltia Henderson made Blaise this AWESOME Superman cake for his birthday BBQ…
One of our favorite things about Kampala is all of the FOOD! There are little fresh produce stands ALL OVER the place, and one of our favorite things to do is create exceptionally colorful meals…
And pretty much every outing into town requires a stop at one of our favorite coffee shops, Dormans, for some cappuccino. On this particular evening (a date night for Blaise and I), we ran into a big group of men from South Sudan who were having some kind of meeting. As they finished, I mustered up the courage to ask which village they are from, and to our surprise, several of them are from Nasir! We had a good conversation in Nuer, and one of the men gave us his card (he works for the South Sudan embassy here in Kampala)…
And just a couple of weeks ago, I cut my hair again, this time above at my shoulders. For me at least, having short hair in Africa is so much easier (and uses less shampoo)!
We have also enjoyed watching a bunch of British television. Our routine is to cook dinner and then sit down to eat while watching either Sherlock or Downton Abbey. We’ve also done some shopping to stock supplies in Nasir, and to add a little decorative color to our house there. But otherwise, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
I’ll blog soon about the situation in South Sudan and what it means for us.
