Today, I woke up to one of the most beautiful days in Uganda yet.  I honestly believe it was a blessing sent to me to remind me how much I love this place... to remind me that this is where I need to be right now.

The view from my window

I spent most of the night in a restless sleep before finally being awakened around 4am by a screaming baby outside my window.  As the baby continued to wail for the next hour, I had time to reflect back on my first night in Uganda, which I spent in this same hotel.  Coming back to this hotel again and again has given me a vantage point to reflect back on how far I've come over the past few months.  The thing I remember most about my first night here is how utterly alone I felt.  Waking up in the middle of the night to find the electricity out, I was literally and figuratively left in the dark.

I've tried several times to put those first few days here into words in my journal but failed.  It's just such a whirlwind of emotions that there really are no words for it.  However, over Christmas break I read Mango Elephants in the Sun, a memoir from a girl who spent two years in a West African village in the Peace Corps.  Although her experience was a little bit more extreme than mine, reading her reflections on her first few days there has finally helped me write about my own experiences.  She writes about how she sits in her hut, dying of thirst, but too afraid to venture out and face the stares of the ladies at the water pump.  My first few days here were also spent hiding out in the sanctuary of my room.  There, I didn't have to pretend that I wasn't lonely, overwhelmed and frankly scared to death.  I would spend hours reading every book that I had packed as a way to escape the world that lay on the other side of the door.  This time around, my first night back felt a little like coming home.  Although I've learned over the past few months that South Carolina will always be where I feel most at home, I couldn't help but feel a huge grin spread across my face as my taxi turned down the familiar dirt road that led to my little hotel.  

I finally drifted back to sleep as the sun was rising and the world outside my window began to wake up.  For the next several hours, I drifted in and out of sleep basking in the warm sunshine and soft lake breezes that seeped through my wide open window.  As I lay in bed, in a room right down the hall from the same room I spent my last night here a little over a month ago, it seemed like the past few weeks spent at home were all just a crazy dream...very surreal.  The Christmas celebrations, the snow days, the trips to Charleston.  It's almost like I just closed my eyes for a few hours, drifted off and woke right back up in my cozy little bed in Entebbe.  The only proof I have that it was all real is the four aching holes in the back of my mouth where my wisdom teeth were removed just a few days before catching a flight back to Uganda.

It's amazing how life can just flash past in a colorful, beautiful blur.  If you aren't paying attention it slips right by, leaving you with only the memories.  

Last night, as I drove away from the airport, I couldn't help but think that the next time I make this drive I'll be saying my good-byes to Uganda, possibly forever.  My heart automatically clenched up.  I know it will be one of the hardiest and heaviest good-byes I've ever had to make.  At this moment, I vowed to make the most possible out my last four months here, soaking in every moment.  Every warm, sunny day.  Every plate of rice and beans.  Every wild, late night with friends.  Every crazy boda-boda ride.  I want to look back on my time here and not just see a blur but a plethora of memories and moments in time.