Most of you have seen the movie Cheaper By the Dozen, its my guilty pleasure. I turn that movie on when I need a good cry because the big family is my dream. This past week felt exactly just like that. The washer and dryer never quit running, the dirty dishes never ended and you had to find the perfect window for a warm shower. The house was NEVER quiet. There was never a second when there wasn't 30 people in the house. The driveways were never clean, due to chalk. There were three guitars in the house and there wasn't one second when they weren't being played. The piano was banged on until we decided to put an 'out of order' sign over it- simply for some noise reduction.
Our host, Steve and Lorena took us on multiple adventures. We got to see Celebration Station, a place with go-carts, arcade games and put-put. You would have thought the children were at Disney World. The kids got to swim at the Y, of course the 'Ugandan Swim Team' loved that. They all are learning to swim. Through all of the adventure of our vacation week, my favorite thing by far was letting the kids watch Frozen. Mind you, these kids never get to watch television, so they have not seen this movie. Their responses were everything I could have asked for and more. After 'Let It Go," Brenda said 'Amen." Most of the kids, even boys, jumped on the couch making sure Christof ran fast enough to get to Anna. They have been singing 'Let It Go' since. The girls also got to attend a ballet class, they learned a few things. One little girls told me she wanted to go back home and teach ballet in Uganda.
I can tell you a million stories about the week.
But here are a few highlights:
the aunties went out shopping with our Lorena, our host mom and her best friend, Stephanie.
one of the chaperones went on a coffee date with someone she had met at the church.
I woke up to a child pulling the sheets off of me and sining 'Rise and Shine'
I shared a child's bed with Darya, chaperone about my age.
all of the aunties and uncles went to see Fast and the Furious 7 (Uncle Jho stayed with the kids)
the american chaperones took multiple runs to Cook-Out to get milkshakes
the aunties danced in a show with the kids (I videoed)
the chaperones snuck downstairs to have cereal at midnight.
we packed up to leave and Keith got a crochet needle stuck in her foot and had to have it removed.
And then there was the big one: when we got halfway to our next destination, (running behind due to the crochet needle incident) and hit bad traffic, so we turned around and headed back to our vacation spot for one more night. This only meant we had to blow up the mattress all over again, we had 4 towels to share throughout the entire house and some beds didn't have sheets, but last night was the best night there.
I have said for years that it is all about family, all about community. And last night as I sat in a room full of people I didn't know a month ago and some I didn't know a week ago. We sat on the couches and watched 'Return to Me,' we had ice cream and commented on the movie the entire time. At one point I looked around and knew that this was family. I knew that these people would be people I would never forget.
During this past week Jho, a Ugandan uncle, decided to tell a few of us what he sees when he looks at us. He told us each completely different things. He told me that when he looks at me, he sees my dreams. He can tell that when he looks at me that I am thinking about the future. That I was here, but I wasn't here fully. It kinda, without him knowing, broke my heart a little. I am a thinker. I think a lot. I process things differently. I write to process. However, this week I didn't write much because I want to change the way I process. I want to fully embrace each moment. I want to remember my dreams, but not have them written all over my face. I don't want to think about how I am going to remember the moment or how I am going to make the moment sound magical in my blog-- instead I am just going to embrace it.
This blog, is one of my favorite things-- I love it. I enjoy every time I write and I write a lot, even when I don't post them. With that being said, I am still going to write about everything on this tour. You guys just may not get every single moment. Some of them are too precious to share and I can't keep pulling my phone out to write a memo in my notepad every time something special happens. Sure, I want to do these things. I want to blog after every conversation I have with a child and I want to try and figure out how this tour is going to benefit my future. But, I need to realize that I only have two months left. The first month flew by.
here is to living in the moment.
<3
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