Fluffy bunny. Or in other words... THE BAD PLACE

GOOD MORNING1 i can't for the life of me figure out how to use exclamation points on this keyboard... so thats why you will see a lot of ones in this post haha. okay okay okay i am so excited to write about my weekend11 i wasn't planning on going river rafting this weekend, but my whole team was going practically so i decided the night before that i would go for it1 ahhhh. i know i thought that repelling down the waterfall was adventurous and life threatening... but thats got nothing on white water rafting down the NILE. oh myyy.

we got picked up in a costa, which is like a huge bus, and drove to jinja to begin the day. oh! i just figured out how to use the exclamation sign! haha okay sorry i'll keep going. our river guides were just hilarious, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. one was from new zealand, Sonny. what a character. we had three raft fulls of us going down the river. my guide was Steph, he's from canada and is here with his wife adopting a little boy. very funny guy. he kept making fun of me because i was so scared and asked a lot of questions. most of them pertained to whether i was going to die on the next rapid, and if he would save me if i was drowning haha. well i don't know how to describe rafting down the nile, other than to say i'm glad to still be alive. the different classes of rapids are rated, and the highest you can raft on and still have a chance of living is class 5. want to guess what class the rapids were that we went on all day?? yep. CLASS 5. we went on about 8 rapids during the seven hours we were going down the nile. the first 7 were terrifying/exhiliarating/awful/fun/crazy and insane!! but we made it through without our rafting flipping. including the one waterfall we went down, but before we went down we got stuck on a rock at the very edge. i may or may not have shed a tear of terror as we sat up there with our river guide screaming orders at us so we wouldn't tip off the edge and get sucked under the falls... its even more embarrassing because we bought a cd of pictures from the day! haha oh boy. neevvvveerrr again. never. but this doesn't even compare to the last rapid. we were doing just fine on the long stretch of flat water as we approached the last one. then steph started to tell us about it. he said he's never been through it without everyone flipping out of the raft and essentially being destroyed by the waves. so we asked how many times he's been down it. don't worry, he'd only done it TWICE!! AHH. then he proceeded to tell us that it is called THE BAD PLACE. he said we can choose to go down that way or take the easy way out. i asked how many people go down the bad place. he said probably less than half. WELL NO WONDER. who wouldn't want to go down a rapid called THE BAD PLACE??! of course we picked to go down it because we are all hardcore like that. well, everyone besides me and katelynn i suppose ;) steph, being the considerate river guide he is, told me i could call it the fluffy bunny to make me less scared. he said all you'll see going into it is white rapid spray so its fitting. thanks. well down we went and all i saw was a ENORMOUS wall of water in front of our raft. we instantly were launched out and people went in all directions. i was tossed under the water for a good 9 or 10 seconds and finally got up for a breath only to be thrown under again by a wave. this time, while i was under, my helmet was ripped off my head somehow! it nearly choked me haha oh it was so confusing down there. awful. just awful. and would you believe that my experience was one of the better ones? mike was caught under a boil for 40 seconds (i'm not exaggerating fyi) and our river guide thought he was going to drown. he finally curled into a ball and shot out though. oh my. people do this for fun?? i think i'm done risking my life for a little while ;)
so yep! that was my weekend! we are all little fried lobsters from being in the sun all day on the nile. oh! and i'm proud to say i have swallowed HALF THE NILE. yay for parasites :)

on sunday i went with katelynn to mass at the local catholic church. we needed to announce information about our disability choir we're starting, so the.. head church leader invited us to attend the meeting. i've been to mass in salt lake and some of it was different than i remembered. i loved the music! they had a full on choir with drums, clapping, and awesome singing. so cool. we're running into a lot of barriers with the choir but i'm confident it will work out. we really want to make it a sustainable project after we leave this summer. so we're working on finding someone that can help keep it going.

yesterday me and suzanne and chelsea did another assembly to promote the writing contest. last school! now we're just preparing to judge next week. i'm so excited! its going to be so good! oh did i mention that second wavers arrived on sunday????? whoo! our house now has 24 people in it hahaha. oh gosh. it is so crazy. i really love it. katie is here too! sadly both her bags were lost but we just found out that they arrived in entebbe yesterday so she'll get them soon. lucky duck!

hmm we also did another teacher training at seya school yesterday. i love all of our teachers that we work with. they are so awesome. we have so much fun. then we went to hope orphanage and played with the kids there until dinner time. those kids are incredible. they have so much ambition, when nothing about their life has given them hope that things will get better. i love encouraging them. and i want to take them all home. ahhh.

well thats all for now! i'm going to an eye camp meeting later, working on square foot gardens, teacher training, choir meetings, etc. i love being here. tomorrow i only have 5 more weeks in africa. i might cry. i don't want to go home! i love you all! goodbye!