fun pics...

new roomie and some photos.

the two halves of this post have actually NOTHING to do with one another.

i have a roomie! wooooo! her name is jill, she's downright 'merican, and she works at e.m.i. it's an engineering/architecture n.g.o. 10 minutes from my apartment. she needed a place to live, came and saw the room at my place over the weekend and plans to move in on saturday!! this has been a huge answer to prayer - one of the biggest struggles here has been combating loneliness in the apartment and learning how to entertain myself. she's in for a huge shock when she realizes i haven't been around other americans in 3 months and i just follow her around the first week asking her to play. don't tell her...it might scare her off, :).

the other half is just some photos. pat keeps asking for more, so here are some. they are from all over the place and i won't bother to give them captions. if you wanna know, just ask...

complaining about wedgies...

i don't know how to spell wedgies...hopefully that's ok with all of you.

i have been doing a significant amount of complaining lately. to everyone. i feel really bad for the people who are with me here and for the people i email consistently at home. it's so easy to dwell on the crappy stuff when i'm away from home/friends/family blah blah blah. i'm just sick of being discontent and honestly, grumpy.

so i decided to try and change it...goooood luck with that. i listened to john piper's 'sustainable grace' sermon last night while cooking my favorite meal of pasta, oil, spices, and aunt nancy's bacon bits. don't knock it til you try it.

anyway...it was a great sermon, i knew it would be. but it wasn't what i expected. i expected a long talk about GOD'S unbelievable mercy and grace, you know...the cheesy things about receiving gifts we don't deserve. but it wasn't like that. it was more about the reasons why GOD lets the crappy stuff happen in the first place and when He doesn't use the grace he obvi has as His disposal. that sentence kinda sounded like a middle-schooler from the valley wrote it - that's ok.

his poem was deeeeep. he repeated it a bunch of times and i had to write it down and re read it another 10 times before i got it:
not grace to bar what is not bliss
nor flight from all distress, but this,
the grace that orders our trouble and pain
and then in the darkness is there to sustain

good luck with interpreting that - took me a whiiiiiile. point is - grace doesn't exist to make our lives perfect. if that were so, there would be no refining fire, no trials to gain the ability to persevere, no 'iron sharpening iron.' the grace is what creates the perseverance, it's what motivates growth, it's what sustains faith.

so i complain a lot - but there is something (a gift, if you will) that i am able to take with no strings attached to counteract all this negativity. sometimes i expect it to be wrapped and sitting on my bed when i get home - i think i'm learning that even though it's free, ya gotta find it.

so where do the wedgies fit in? i'm so glad you asked. i knew this post would be a little deep and definitely unappealing to some of my younger followers (um, face and jon brother...haha, just kidding), so i needed a good story to cap it off with.

yesterday, i went to a place called lugogo to meet a friend for lunch. her name is hannah...she is british which means she is funnier than me and has a much better accent than i do. i was in tears half the time complaining about things that probably don't really matter in life and she just sat there taking it like a champ. anyway - we went to the grocery store (for the sole reason of buying apple donuts...the ONLY dessert i have had in uganda that will ever be worth mentioning) and for some reason, i was determined to eat a hot dog. WHY?! maybe the worst decision i have made eating in uganda thus far. it was naaaasty...but i was starving so i ate the whole thing. don't judge me, money is tight and i wasn't about to go buy something else. sorry, this is a lot of details and build up for a story that may not be that funny at the end...don't say i didn't warn you.

so after eating a lunch of a hot dog and a donut (don't forget the french fries, excuse me, 'chips') - i decided to walk the mile or so back to the office. half way through, i had a fairly serious wedgie problem and was determined not to do anything about it til i got back to the office. men already were asking me to marry them and telling me they loved me...'mzungu, i love you SO much. please, sista, please - how ARE you?!' i wasn't about to attract more attention by touching my butt.

and then i looked to my right. right off the street (a huuuuuuge, super busy street...six, maybe eight lanes total), there was a woman just poppin a squat. with no inhibition. she was just doing her business with her skirt hiked up right there. and she wasn't a beggar or homeless. she was dressed in nice clothing and looked like an average ugandan. before i could stop, i said to myself, but very out loud, 'that JUST happened...'

and then i picked my wedgie and walked back to work laughing.

a couple more...

just some photos.

everyone keeps asking me for photos. the next couple posts are just that. these are from my trip to gulu and lira. in no particular order...i have about 500 from that trip, so i just picked some that i thought looked nice.

the bush.

i told pat in an email the other day that i was going to the bush to find a patient to do a follow up story. she asked what the bush was like and what did it mean to go out there. i will tell you...

it was a five hour trip in each direction, half of which was on roads that weren't really roads. i am going to post photos of how i rode, the terrain, and the people we met when we got there.

enjoy.

freep frow.

so...the past week has been hard. reallllly hard. i won't go into details because i could type out each day for an hour and no one wants to read that. basically, i was sick while on assignment in zambia. which means i was pretty much alone. i'm blessed to not have gotten sick before this, but i really wish it would have happened in uganda where i could have had someone to take care of me. and yes, i'm still young enough to have someone take care of me when i am sick, :). i missed pat dearly...but i'm glad to say the week is over and i get to go 'home' (to uganda) on friday...wooooot!

the high point of the week was definitely saturday. a girl from the states showed up to stay in the guest house so i wasn't alone, which was nice. she is a med student from yale (i'm hanging out with people from yale...the last person i stayed in a guest house with was from harvard - stupid and inadequate don't even BEGIN to describe how i feel here sometimes, haha) and is here to assist on ortho surgeries for the week. anyway - she showed up saturday so it was nice to chat with someone.

then hitler came to pick me up. ahh yes, i forgot to tell you all about hitler. he introduced himself the first day when he picked me up from the airport and i literally called him, 'hey you' for the first two days of the trip because i SWORE i heard him wrong. in fact, i did not and his name is actually hitler. sweet sweet guy, works at the hospital. anyway - he picked me up on saturday morning and we went to the weekly soccer game. excuse me, futbol match. i told him i was pretty sick and would just watch but he showed up at my door with my new CURE international jersey in hand. complete with the green socks and shorts. so i had to say yes.

we get to the pitch, which is more dirt than grass, and i hacked my way up and down the left wing for an hour. at one point, the 40 year old looked at me laughing and said, 'i am playing you as if you are a lady.' so i said, 'well, that's good because i am playing you as if you are an old man.' he laughed but i wasn't trying to be funny. i was trying to breathe.

i was very disappointed in my play and wanted to impress them. i read a book recently and the author said that each person needs a USP...Unique Selling Point. i could not come up with mine in life, but i found it on the soccer field. the good old flip throw. i figured since i made a loser of myself by failing to demonstrate any actual skill with the ball at my feet, i should probably throw it in at some point to redeem any cool points. with about five minutes left, the ball went out and i jogged over and threw it in. i have NO idea what their reactions were, they were speaking all sorts of zambian languages (there are 72 total). but i think they liked it. after the game we took a photo and a man from the other team came over and said:

'rashel!!!! what is it that skill you call?'
'a flip throw...you should try it'
'ahh, i see. a freeeeep frow!!'

and so went my saturday...africa makes me laugh.