So I've finally arrived in Uganda and I'm now in Soroti - with the Teso people that I love so much. I think I'll be here for maybe two more days before I get to the village, which will be a good time of rest because I am exhausted! I'm significantly more tired this time than I was my last two trips from a lot of travel and lay overs and not enough sleep.

I arrived in London about 9 am their time with Katy (a friend who I was able to fly over with but who will stay in the capital city/SW area of Uganda while I'm in the NE area). We had a 12-hour layover and she had mentioned going out into the city to do some sight-seeing. Katy is a much more adventurous person than I am and the mention of doing this might have given me a mini-inner panic attack even though I held it together on the outside - "Oh sure, I hadn't even thought about doing that. That would be fun!"

So before we got off the plane into the London airport, I made one last remark hoping she would have changed her mind about going out into the city - "I really didn't get any sleep on that flight... Maybe we should just stay in the airport and sleep." My remark was mostly and rightly ignored :)

Then it came time for the transition, figuring things out, waiting - where should we go? what should we do? how much money will we need? and how will we get there? As we figured out answers, with each new question I would think "Well we're not gonna be able to figure this out. We should probably just go back to the terminal now." Even as we sat on the Underground on our way into London with everything figured out, I still wanted to turn around and go back to the safety and familiarity of the airport.

In the end, we had a good time - we saw Big Ben, the eye of London, Trafalgar Square, and Buckingham Palace, we ate jacket potatoes, saw people wearing the strangest things (including a woman who couldn't have been over 30 who had dyed her shoulder length hair completely gray), and saw a group of guys doing parkour - all very interesting :)

I'd like to think that if it hadn't been 4 am Michigan time and if I'd slept a little more on the flight and if I'd had a bigger breakfast, I wouldn't have been quite so neurotic about the whole process.

But really, the unknown is never easy. I never like to be stretched or to wait and slowly figure things out. Fortunately, I know I'm not alone in this - some of my closest friends are in seasons of not knowing and waiting for the unknown and they're not crazy about it either (though to their credit, they've been in a much longer season of waiting than just a few hours :)But in the end, it is good and it is worth it. (You're gonna have to forgive me - when I started this blog, I really had much bigger plans and hoped for a much more thought out ending, but my brain is feeling squishy and I'm tired of it sitting on my screen while I try to think of something more poignant to say... So you'll just have to think up your own wise ending :)

As for my time in Uganda - it's been great! I arrived at around 4 pm to Soroti. After about 6 hours of driving on terrible Ugadan roads, we pulled into Joseph's driveway and I was soo relieved. Then someone came to the gate and talked to the driver and we pulled back out! We drove over to the TCON house (the house where our big teams stay when they come here) and I thought Joseph was going to make me stay there by myself! Then I saw a big bus in the yard and found out there was a team of mzungus here from Atlanta coming to see their carepoint for the first time :) So I got to spend last night and this morning talking to and laughing with them and listening to them talk about their experiences from their first trip, which were all so unsurprisingly similar to our first time :) But it was so exciting to see their passion and I can't wait to see what they are going to do in Adachar :) Ok I'm finally going to wrap this up now and you guys can pray that my next blog is a little more concise and less long-winded :)

Love and miss you all!!
Caitlin