I know it might stump some of you out there, but I just don't have a ton to say about life....yet. I think everything is ruminating. We spent 5 weeks in Uganda- a developing country- with shady power, shady deals with higher ups, and lots of poverty. Oh, and we have two new children. So while it seems that I should have stories for hours of entertainment, my thoughts just haven't congealed yet.
Here are two things though that have struck me....one funny, one serious.
Funny first: Well, maybe it's not funny, but it's not serious. I have always been a champion sleeper. I have slept more than a third of my life. I love sleep. I'm secretly hoping sleep is a part of heaven...daily sleep. The trip to Uganda was no different. We left for Africa at 10am which meant that we were up pretty early. Our first leg was to Atlanta. Jonathan's idea of plane rides to pick up two orphans half way around the world is to pass the time with cool movies he rented on his iPhone. He even bought a splitter for our headphones so we could both listen to the movie. It didn't mesh with my idea of starting this shockingly spiritual journey off right, but I didn't want to be a nay-sayer so I complied...yes, another shocker.
The movie ended not long before touch down but my eyes had been drooping for a good 2 hours. And yes, that means they were drooping most of the way through the movie. Anyway, our flight from Atlanta took off about 5pm and flew to Amsterdam. It was an 8 or 9 hour flight "through the night." I like a good 10 hours of sleep so I knew I had to get sleeping once we were in the air. Jonathan was a bit bummed when he asked what movie I wanted to watch and I kindly excused myself. I had my ear plugs, socks, neck pillow, and eye mask. I was out within 20 minutes of reaching cruising altitude. And I slept until breakfast was served on the plane 1 hour before we landed. Our layover in Amsterdam was 3 or 4 hours. Our flight to Kampala was an 8 hour flight as well. And it was a repeat of the previous flight. I slept like a baby. And we hit the ground running in Uganda. The time difference didn't really effect us. And there were many nights I got my prescribed 10 hours while there. (And there were nights we were up with Ki while he was coughing up a lung.) Let me backtrack a second. I'm the type of person that wears my sin on my sleeve. It takes a newby about 7 minutes to figure out what I struggle with in life and that I've got a long way to go. I am the opposite of my sweet husband who can appear to the untrained eye to be perfect. But the bummer is that we both struggle with pride. Aaaand back to my story. More than once we thought, "Who are these loser that 'struggle' with jet lag. They are weakies." Well, we had the longest day in our history November 29. We left Uganda for the US thirty minutes before November 29 started and landed in ABQ 30 hours later at 7:45pm Thursday, November 29. We traveled with two babies that slept off and on which meant mommy's sleep wasn't the most important anymore. By the time we got home and let our new kids play with our old kids, it was 11pm. T.I.R.E.D. I had been up a good 48 hours. I was the first one to say that I HAD to go to bed. I just knew that I was going to sleep like a rock and open my eyes at the crack of 8 or 9am. Nope. O One hundred hours. 1am. And there was NOTHING I could do to fall back asleep. NOTHING. Jonathan and I hadn't seen 1am together so many times since we were dating. This satanic thing called jet lag lasted over a week for us. On day 10 we had the bright idea of take sleeping pills even though we could barely keep our eyes open at 8pm. It worked. Praise the Lord. AND we will never again have prideful thoughts about jet lag talk. It is real people.
And since I was a bit wordy on the "funny" topic, I'm only going to mention the second one and will give you more to chew on in my next post.
I don't think I will ever purchase a Starbucks Peppermint Mocha with the same ushy-gushy feelings again. Pauline (Elsie and Ki's biological mother) does back-breaking garden tending work for $4...a week. Not an hour. Not a day. But a week. That, my friends, is the same amount as a Caramel Macchiato.
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