Too many birds on my wires...

Again, blog build up...what to do...this is becoming a trend...

How about methodically plugging through, seems to work for me in other parts of life, let's give it a whirl...

- long week. realized at the begining of the week that I had somewhere to be/something to do every night for 7 days in a row...all wonderful things to be doing/places to be going, but WAY TOO MUCH for this introvert. I don't ever realize the toll that these things have on me until it's over or until I'm in over my head...
- speaking of being in over my head...got a great line from my mom this week...she and my dad often sit on their back porch in the mornings/evenings whenever the weather allows. And in st. louis most every block has an alley, so their back porch over looks the alley, which is a pretty cool alley if you ask me, but it also overlooks the telephone wires strung up and down the alley. These wires are the favorite perching location for most of the birds of the neighborhood (maybe they can smell mom's coffee all the way from the wires since it's so strong! :) Anyways, mom and dad often comment on the birds and sometimes there's no room left, the whole wire is full of birds, and evidently my mom has used this as a metaphor for life and now uses the very witty line "I've got too many birds on my wires" when she has too much going on at any given moment...I'm gonna start using it...doesn't really carry over in a cultural context in which there are no telephone wires or alleys or back porches...oh well. The photo at the top of the post is what I look like when I've got too many birds on my wires (it was taken on tuesday I think)...just FYI
- on wednesday we had a small group of Ugandan friends over to Sarah and Ashley's for dinner and a movie with discussion. We had chicken curry and then watched Shooting Dogs (Beyond the Gates is the US release title) which is about the Rwandan genocide. We had a brief discussion afterwards that was really interesting to me...one of them was laughing after the movie finished and the rest of us were quiet. "What in the world are you laughing about?!" I asked him, "you are all so quiet and it's just a movie" he said. He went on to explain that he doesn't think that we should allow a movie to dictate our feelings...we talked about that a bit, and then talked about the movie itself and some of the things we learned, questions that were raised, etc. It was a good evening.
- It's advent now...and I'm having a REALLY hard time getting my head and heart in synch with the calendar. All of the usual cues of weather and temperature changes just don't happen here, so we've got to resort to alternative means...music...lots of Christmas music...which leads me to the next point.
- I'm in Kampala now. We (Sarah and our friend Amina and I - along with our Fort Portal teammate Laura May for the FP-KLA leg) drove on saturday and we listened to my ipod the whole way, put my holiday list on shuffle and presto - 8 hours later we reached and the playlist was over. again, praise God for safe travel.
-sunday we went to church with Laura May and then to lunch. Upon pulling out of the parking lot after lunch I heard a sound and felt a bumping that seemed remarkably like a flat tire, Sarah jumped out to check and sure enough. Very flat. I pulled over to the side of the parking lot and 3 guys worked together and an hour later our tire was changed...our jack was christened but doesn't seem to exactly function very well as a jack for a large vehicle...it required lots of rocks and planks of wood and such...I was just really glad that it was in the parking lot in Kampala and not on the road over the mountains or even on the road in Kampala. But, at least I know how to work the jack now (it's a hydraulic jack - never seen one like it before coming here - Scott Myhre had shown me in theory but not with an actual vehicle/tire - I'm a practice makes perfect kinda girl...). And the 3 guys who sweat their butts off in the parking lot wouldn't even take the bottles of cold water we offered them...craziness...this is dry season, it's blazing hot in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of a parking lot. I said, "but you guys have been so kind?!" and one said "but you didn't arrange for this" (pointing at the car), "you're right, I didn't, but God did...and he arranged for you too!" they laughed and still wouldn't take a water. They're as stubborn as I am! Now I'll add a trip to City Tyre to my Kampala to do list...keeps growing every day...

Okay, I think that's enough for now. More another time.