my walk to work.

Most of us in the states start our day off with some coffee, maybe a bowl of cereal, and a decent commute to work in some form of traffic. Life here is Gulu is a little bit different than that. The house I live in is a 15 min walk (2ish km/ 1 mile) to 'town' where you'll find your local super market (uchumi) and our favorite western coffee shop (coffee hut). Our walk to work is even shorter, probably a little under a mile up the road. On the smaller streets around us, you'll rarely see a car. Just bikes, bodas, and people walking. It's nice to take the time to walk places and say 'good afternoon' to those walking beside us. 

My favorite part about the walk to work are the kids! All around us are little huts and neighborhoods full of the most beautiful children. Here in Gulu they call Americans 'muzungo' or 'mono' so every day as we walk by the kids will run over to us and yell 'mono! mono!' and shake our hands (the proper greeting here) My heart melts every time! 

*also, kids here love getting their photo taken. They'll run over and point to the camera and say 'photo!' as they stand back and do a pose. It cracks me up! 

right in front of our house/gate

these boys were hilarious. The little one ran up to me and with a huge smile asked me to take his photo. I took a few steps back and they just naturally posed like it. HAHAH. amazing.

a small market on the way to work. Sometimes we'll buy tomatoes from here

the road to Kku!

"mono! mono!" 

After I shook their hands I turned back around and saw them posed like this. 

They couldnt have planned this better - and I think its my favorite photo so far. 

These are the kids right down the street from us. They are the ones we got our puppy from!

Blessed to be living in a place with such beautiful, radiant, joyful people. It's wild to know that this is home for me, for the next two months. I'm slowly starting to get in the groove of things, adjusting to the pace of life here. It feels good to slow down, to walk places, to buy local groceries, to say hi to my neighbors, to have super dirty sandals, and to know that each day was so full of a bunch of tiny awesome moments. 

"Joy comes to us in moments - ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary" - Brene Brown, Daring Greatly.