Just an update...

Hello everyone,

 

We just wanted to update everyone on the postal situation. There seems to be some chaos with sending packages from Rwanda. For a while we thought it was receiving and sending  but have recently learned they shut down all sending from Rwanda to the US/Canada until further notice. The US doesn’t accept any packages from other countries without an “x-rayed” approval. Rwanda doesn’t have the capabilities to do that and routes all their mail through Kenya. Kenya recently had problems and is really backed up with all mail. SO, until further notice we will not be sending anything to you such as letters, packages etc. Also, anything we’ve sent since the beginning of December is probably going to be returned to us. That explains the missing letters, packages, etc. Thanks for your patience and we’ll talk to you soon!

Gorillas!

Oh man. Can I just say that today we had the experience of our life. I mean, I’m sure we will experience many other things that will be pretty stinking incredible but today….this takes the cake.

Let me start you off with our journey. Yesterday was national elections. So, we start our hike up the mountain at 6:30 am. I get to the top and I am waiting on Elise to return on the moto with Jarod. He finally gets there and we start trying to find a bus. Since they’re having elections (or “erections” as they call them because they interchange their l’s and r’s freely), the buses aren’t running. We finally got a ride with a friend who is an engineering consultant for several rice mills in Rwanda. He stopped and offers to take us to Kigali with a quick stop at his rice factory that is generally about 15 km’s off the main road. On this day though, he needed to check out all the equipment and walk around talking to the workers. It ended up being about 2 hours of work. Then, on the way out we were all talking and he took a wrong turn. So, we added lost to our day. We were fretting as we absolutely had to get to Kigali and then on to Musanze. However, we made it at 3:12 to Kigali and literally ran to the bus stop to catch the bus to Musanze. The buses were all booked. Of course right? Well, we ended up getting one and before it was leaving we absolutely had to go to the bank. As we started using the ATM it starts to spit our money out and just stops. So, we ran to the other ATM and the same thing happens. I am literally almost in tears, sweating and stressed that we’re not going to make it and our money is going to go down the drain. So, I go sit down to order some food at a really nice place called Bourbon. It’s a coffee shop with great great food and drinks. So, I order some food for me and Jarod, she returns to tell me they are out of my food. So, I order 2 of the same thing that I had ordered Jarod…but then she comes back and says they are out of that too. At this point, I was not a nice person and yelled “well what do you have?” Not my best and shining moment. But, then I felt terrible and apologized and just asked for a drink. Jarod makes it back and we go to the bus stop. As we’re waiting…the bus doesn’t show. It ends up being over 25 minutes late and then everyone got into a fight trying to shove each other out of the way to get on. As we’re leaving town he stops to fill up with gas. I’m stressing because PC has a new policy that we can’t be out traveling after 5:00 pm. Safety reasons. So, then as we’re stalled on the road because a new road is being built Jarod says “if we aren’t mellow by the end of these 2 years, we didn’t learn our lesson”. I said “well it’s been a year and I am not feeling mellow right now in one single way.” Haha! So finally, we arrive…..we get up early and go to the gorillas!

We finally saw the gorillas. It only took 11 months and 10 days of waiting and can I just say that it was worth every single moment. We started out walking thru the forest and less than probably 15 minutes after starting, our guide stops us to tell us that we are here and that soon we’ll see them. So we walk single file behind him thru the huge bamboo shoots and suddenly we see this little guy playing. Then, we turn past this big bush of bamboo and there sits the giant silver back, the chief. He’s just hanging out and vegging on some bamboo leaves. He doesn’t even take a break to look up at these 10 people who just stumbled upon him. Clearly this isn’t his first rodeo. As we stand there, I’m thinking this is insane…we’re like 21 feet away and our guide just keeps going until we’re literally less than 5 feet from him. Again, he never even moves. So we start taking photos and a momma turns around and has the cutest little guy on her lap. He was adorable. 6 months. Adorable!

While we’re sitting here just ogling over these beautiful apes, they are just eating, napping and playing as if we aren’t even there. This little baby comes over curious to see what I’m doing. He gets probably 2 feet away and is totally just staring at me as if he knows me. Of course, the guide then grunts at him and does a little semi charge to get him to back away because they don’t ever want them touching the humans. I completely understand this with all the diseases we could pass to them, but at this moment….this adorable little baby coming to me….I definitely wanted to pick him up and cuddle him. It was all I could do not to just scream from the cuteness. I mean, even Jarod said that experience could “melt even the hardest heart”. In total we probably stayed with the gorilla’s about an hour and 10 minutes. Our guide said we needed to go so unfortunately we had to say goodbye…but we will probably visit again.

It was truly the most wonderful experience and I recommend it to ANYONE visiting this country. I’m going to post pictures on Facebook and a few on here too.

More to come...

Hello everyone! Again, it has been a while since I’ve written but here I am. So not a lot has happened but I’m trying to find some things to type about.  Jarod recently did a project with the small primary school here in our village. He applied to this organization Watercharity.org and they gave him $500 US dollars to put towards a project here. They wired the money, the school took the project and they ran with it! You can read all about his project on their website. If you click Rwanda, scroll down and you can find his project with pictures. I am about to apply to do a project with the larger Primary school here. Hopefully that will be on the website soon as well.

 

We’ve pretty much just been trying to start projects and get something going here. We are working with a supermodel who is wanting to develop a bracelet here that would be sold around the world. She’s here this week and we’re meeting with the craft group to start working on that…wish us luck! Hopefully, we’ll find something she’s interested in and start turning out beautiful bracelets.

 

Here’s just some random funny thing that have happened the other day: I went to take money out of the ATM and as I previously mentioned, Rwandans confuse their “R”s and “L”s. They interchange them as if they’re one letter. So as I am waiting for my money to pop out, at the bottom of the screen it says “To end transaction, press Cancer”. Haha! I started laughing and barely caught my money as it fell out of the slot. I couldn’t help but remember I am still in a developing country even though I am using an ATM in the capital.

 

So in other news, we’re extremely bummed about the recent civil unrest in Egypt. I am glad, for Egypt that it is happening as it has been deemed “proper revolution”. If you don’t know, basically (from what we’ve been told as we still don’t have a radio) the young people of the country that are “in” with the times are sick and tired of a crappy and corrupt government so they’ve taken it upon themselves to form alliances and march until the Prime Minister steps down. He fired all his cabinet and they’ve cut internet access with the entire country until something happens. This is awesome, but we’re sad because that means that until things calm down, Peace Corps “forbids” us from going there and as many of you know…we were planning this huge trip to Egypt and Israel for our 3 year anniversary in April. I’m so bummed but also so thankful that we hadn’t bought our tickets yet. We’ll figure out something else to do but we had a kick butt itinerary and now I’m bummed it isn’t going to be happening. Ahh!! Why can’t we all just get along???

 

This weekend we are going to see the gorillas. I am sooooo excited. We will definitely be posting pictures and writing a blog about our wonderful experience. This is said to be one of those “once in a lifetime” experiences and so far, not one of our friends that have went have been let down. So, we’ll keep you updated.

 

I need to give a shout out to all my January peoples:

January 4^th-Happy Birthday Landon. I hope it was wonderful and that God is continually blessing you and Cortney. January 25^th-Happy Birthday Nanny! I misss you so much and will see you as soon as possible. January 31^st-Happy Birthday Daddy. The big 50!! I can’t believe you turned 50…I think I’m supposed to send over the hill balloons and stuff but well, I didn’t think they’d make it from here. Haha. I love you and hope it was great Also on the 31^st-Happy Birthday Amanda Kelley-Ewing. I hope your day was wonderful .

 

I miss you all and we look forward to seeing you. We love you guys and pray for you all continually!

 

Don't look down!!!

Hello again…so as you may already know, Sarah and I recently took a little trip to Uganda over the New Years for a short vacation getaway.  The schedule – raft the one and only Nile River and then bungee jump over it.  The trip was great and unfortunate it wasn’t longer.  But, we did have a great time.  The trip started off a little odd though.

 

The day before our departure we had to book our seats and I was given a choice of every seat since nobody else had yet booked.  I asked the man working the booth if there were any seats that had more leg room than the others as Sarah and I are both very tall.  He assured me that every seat had the same amount of leg room.  We left Kigali around 5:30 in the morning which would put us reaching Kampala around 3 in the afternoon or so.  And, when we boarded the bus and sat down, I couldn’t help but notice that I had picked the two worst seats in the bus.  I mean, I couldn’t even put my legs in front of me.  They had to be up on the back of the other seat, over on Sarah or out in the isle which is what happened most of the trip. 

 

The other interesting thing is that my bladder just decided to stop doing its job and didn’t want to store anything.  So, not 10 minutes after we left, I had to pee like none other.  Unfortunately the Uganda/Rwanda border was only little over an hour drive.  Once we reached the border, I in a very quick manner showed myself to the restroom…or room with a small trench in the floor that everyone shared.  Also, just to be safe, I used the restroom again on the Ugandan side of the border before we left for the remaining 6 hours of driving.  It seems that day my bladder was dysfunctional because not 10 minutes after leaving the border I had to go again and there was no stopping for quite some time…not to mention the roads in these parts are not the smoothest.  I began looking for every opportunity to get out and go but the bus never stopped.  Finally a few hours later the bus stopped to let people get some food.  I ran out and asked where I could use the bathroom and some locals pointed in one direction.  As I walked over to that direction I saw nothing but the front yard of somebody’s house.  At this point…there was no stopping it…something had to come out or I was going to spontaneously combust.  Luckily I found some tall grass measuring about 3 feet wide by 4 feet tall…I’ll take it.  I am pretty sure that day…some local Ugandans got to know this tall skinny white boy more than they wanted to but to be honest with you…I didn’t care.  Sadly, there was another instance like this a few hours later but in situations like this, pride just seems to go out the window. 

 

Anyway, we made it safely to Uganda later that day.  The next day on New Year’s Eve, we joined a group of about 25 others for a day of rafting on the Nile.  Sarah and I were the only other Americans besides one other couple.  Everyone else seemed to be from Europe.  I never new the Nile had such huge powerful rapids.  We hit several class 5 rapids that day and ended up out of the boat, floating down the river in the rapids many times…but every second of it was amazing.  There were even several class 6 rapids that are illegal for companies to take people down…something about people dying and what not.  There was even a point when we all got out of our boats, walked around a humongous class 6 rapid and then put the boat back in on the smaller class 5 end of the rapid.  It was an exhilarating and action packed day.  That night we stayed at the campsite in the dorm rooms the rafting company owns.  It seems that the bed bugs particularly enjoyed my skin that night because the next morning, New Year’s Day, I had well over 100 bites up and down my arms and down my back.  Fortunately, I don’t seem to itch at all with the bug bites here so it didn’t bother me one bit.  As of today, they are all finally gone.  Anyway, we also did the bungee jump the next day which was pretty amazing…145 feet suspended over the Nile River…what a feeling.  I once again found myself asking the question right before I jumped, what is it inside of us that makes us want to do these crazy things?  Anyway, I am glad I did it and I would recommend this trip for anyone visiting East Africa. 

 

Later that night, we hopped on the midnight bus back to Kigali and 10 hours later, we were back in Rwanda.  All in all…great trip…just a little too short.  Next time I think we will have to make it a little longer. 

 

December Birthdays and Anniversaries

Hello All!!! I am so sorry that we've delayed in posting these. We most definitely did not forget but it just seems that December FLEW right past us without ever posting anything. So this blog is completely dedicated to anyone that had anything in December. :)

 

December 1st-Happy Birthday Aunt Sheila. We hope it was marvelous.

December 4th-Happy Birthday Aunt Mary. I hope you're feeling better than you were when we spoke.

December 10th-Happy Birthday Mom...I love you and hope your day was amazing!

December 20th-Happy Anniversary JC & Crystal. 14 years-congratulations.

December 22nd-Happy Anniversary Mark & Melissa. 19 years-keep it going.

December 25th-Happy Birthday Roger. Hope your day was special.

December 27th-Happy Birthday Blake.

December 30th-Happy Birthday Mom #2! We love you and hope your day was amazing!

December 31st-Happy Anniversary to Terry & Penny and Nanny & Papaw. I hope all of you have wonderful days and that your anniversaries were a wonderful way to end the year. Nanny and Papaw-I hope that you guys know I didn't forget your anniversary. I thought about you the whole day and although we were in Uganda and couldn't call I wanted to let you know I love you both so much and you're such an inspiration! Penny & Terry...hope you weren't in the hospital on your anniversary and if you were...take a vacation to celebrate your 29 years.

 

We love you ALL so much.

 

 

More updates on life to come just as soon as we get internet to upload the pics. The internet here WON’T work when it comes to photos.