MADE IT TO GULU.

yowzah. So i'm finally here, sitting in the intern house in Gulu.
its only been 1 day and it has already been nothing short of an adventure.
so here's how it all went down

1. leave LAX and fly 13 hrs to Istanbul Turkey. Thankfully I sat next to a super nice young lady named Enas who was on her way back home to Jordan and she helped me find the wifi on the plane and explain to me what exactly I was eating.

2. Landed in Turkey and had a quick 40min to get to my next plane. I said bye to Enas and rushed through the transit security check only to find that my gate was far far farrrrr away. Then I look up to the terminal sign and read "501 to Entebbe LAST CALL" Thats when I really freaked out and started straight up running through the hot, extremely crowded & confusing istanbul airport. Praise God I got to my plane on time and chatted with another young lady who was on her way back to Kampala Uganda to work with a non profit.

3. The flight from Istanbul took me to Kigali, Rwanda and then to Entebbe, Uganda. This flight was so crowded and hot, but I got to sit by the window which meant I got some pretty rad views of northern Africa at night. I slept a lot also, and when we finally landed in Uganda at around 4am I was ready to go.

4. exit the plane, get through customs no problem, and head out to find my luggage. Only problem - no luggage to be found. This is when normal 'panic amie' would come in but for some reason (coulda been the jet lag) I was pretty calm. The airport was tiny and literally every person left the airport but me. So im in the process of finding my bag when I run out to tell Ben (kki staff) that i'm here but waiting. That bag process ended up taking an extra 1.5hr or so and we finally left the airport at 5.30am.

5. leave Entebbe airport and drive 1hr to our hotel. Ben and I crash for about 1 hr before heading out to our next driver's car and start our journey at 7am. Our journey was a 6hour drive from Entebbe to Gulu on a straight, long, dirt road with more pot holes than I could ever imagine. Our driver got pulled over twice for speeding haha and I felt the jet lag hitting me hard on the drive up. 6 hour is a long long time to be sitting in a car, especially after youve been sitting on an airplane for 20hrs prior.

6. FINALLY get to the intern house in Gulu at around1pm and meet my fellow interns. Really rad people, and a great mix of ages, personalities, and hometowns. We chatted for a while and they offered me clothes to wear while I wait for my bags, and then we headed out to play some soccer. We walked 15min to a local high school and met up with a bunch of other foreigners living in Uganda! A lot of them are girls from 31 bits (a company similar to kki) and others are here with Bob Goff's school, as well as some other foreign aid organization. I never guessed i'd meet so many foreigners in the middle of East Africa. Pretty cool community here.

wow. so basically the past few days have been wild wild ride. The whole plane ride here I felt so at peace about landing in Uganda, and really felt covered by the Lord's spirit as I entered the country. Its wild being in such a foreign place, and I know it hasnt fully set in yet - but I am thankful for these gracious people surrounding me and a place to dive deeper into the Goodness of God at all moments of the day.

*also today we got a puppy. yes. an adorable $8 puppy from the ladies down the street. We named her Gulu but are calling her lulu which is very fitting and funny considering I just worked at lulu lemon!

anyway, beautiful first day in Gulu. Tomorrow i'll see the compound and meet all the ladies. Also, i'm not bringing my camera around for a week or so...so photos will be soon!