Not always great

Here it is.

Rwanda.

The long awaited trip, the time spent with friends, time spent at the Widow's village, Star school, and around Kigali.....
Nope.
Well, not quite.
I arrived in Rwanda on Thursday evening, the 9th of August and had a good evening.
Friday morning I was sick as a dog. I pretty much slept/laid in bed starting Friday morning to Monday evening... Throw in a couple of super fun hospital visits where I thought I might actually be poked to death or bleed to death. It was crazy!

Word finally came on Monday-When I was starting to feel better, that I had pretty severe food poisoning and my white blood cell count was going down and I was on the mend.

Let me tell you. This experience was crazy.

Amidst the miserableness, I did have great caretakers, but some of the days they had super important commitments that they had to leave for and I was left home alone all day long with a house girl that speaks no English. Talk about difficult.
In the midst of all this I may have evaluated and re-evaluated my "crazy" plan of coming to Africa to spend the entire semester, and I may have wanted nothing more than to teleport myself back home and never leave the country again.

I had a lot of time to sit and think, and remember someone saying that I only loved Rwanda so much because nothing bad had ever happened, and when that happened, I wouldn't like it so much.
I remember thinking, what a horrible thing to tell someone who is heading out in a few months to spend the whole semester, but in the midst of my crazy sickness, I thought, maybe he was right.

No.

This is where I'm supposed to be.
I don't know what that looks like, and I don't know when or where or how even, but this is it.

Through this sickness I realized that yes, maybe I was living a fairytale of perfect-ness when I came to Rwanda in the past.
I had plenty of crazy good fruit and food, a nice bed with fresh towels, access to a vehicle to drive me around, and a shower with hot water.
This has shown me that while that isn't always real life, I can still push through and love what I do have, even if its not perfect. Because bad days will come, but so will good days, and I have to have one to truly appreciate the other.

So,

Things are better.
I'm better, life is great, and I'm heading to Uganda for my super crazy awesome, hopefully sick free semester on Monday!!!

Until I post again.....

-Jenn