Surprise!

by emma | Jul 22, 2008 | Travel

On Saturday the Aberdeen team, Jacob, and myself piled into a van at an unearthly hour of the morning (6:45am) for the 2 hour drive up to Jinga, for a spot of white water rafting! We tackled up to grade 5 rapids as we rafted down the River Nile for a few hours, stopping for lunch on an island before the drive back to Kampala. Most of you know that I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie anyway, as well as loving being in, near or on the water in any capacity, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself!!

As if that wasn’t enough for one day, I was taken completely by surprise in the evening when the Aberdeen team took me out for dinner to celebrate my birthday! They had all these lovely hand-made items sitting on my bed when I got out of the shower, informing me that I was being taken to Cafe Roma’s for a spot of birthday banter. I was so surprised, and taken aback to be honest… really wasn’t expecting it and was just blown away by how they were thinking about me and wanting to treat me. Dinner was lovely, as were the very touching toasts that everyone made. I am continually amazed at how close you can grow to a group of people in such a short space of time, and saying goodbye to the girls on Sunday night was hard. It’s pretty incredible how God takes you to the other side of the world to develop friendships with people who live 3 hours away from you!

The staff at Shalom brought out a big cake after we got back from dinner, as the girls sang happy birthday… the cake is slowly disappearing!

Seriously, a massive thank you to all you folks who have made my birthday so special: to the Aberdeen girls, to Jacob, to my Aussie mates who left me a lovely card and a great song on my camcorder!