Happy Birthday to Me

I have arrived.  I am solidly 30 years old.  I honestly can't believe it's been a full decade since my twentieth birthday, but there you have it.  My week off was wonderful, I got so much done.  I got those curtains hung, I fixed and organized my closet,  I got Ivy's ear mites problem taken care of (hopefully!), I painted my toes and finished Modern Family Season 2.  I read another of the Anne books (finally reading Anne of Green Gables.  Still dreaming of my very own Gilbert Blythe.)  I had some capris mended and played plenty of guitar.  And I got really close to finishing knitting that baby sweater!  The whole week was full of doing those things that should be done, but never get done.  They're almost all done now!  Lovely.

My friends Charity, Elizabeth and I decided we should do my celebrate-Morgan's-twenties dinner the night before my birthday at KSP - it's a hotel here in town - one of the few four-story buildings in town - and they have a a rooftop restaurant.  It's not a popular restaurant for one reason only - notoriously slow service.  And if you are abandoning a place here in Gulu because of slow service, you know it's bad.  Fast food is a completely foreign concept in every way.  You just figure they really ARE killing the chicken out back.  But the rooftop has great atmosphere and the food at KSP really is quite good.  So I went in a few days in advance and asked them to prepare a few dishes for 12 people to eat, and really, they didn't do a bad job!  It was no slower than any other Gulu restaurant.  (No faster either, but we're not lookin' for a miracle here people.)  And the coconut curry chicken was delicious!!

Friends at dinner - Grace, Me, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hilary, Tom, Jon, Paul, Chris, and Charity.  

We headed to the pub for trivia night afterwards, and happy birthday to me!  We won!  First place team gets a crate of beer....which isn't all that exciting for me, but winning is always fun!

Yeah!  Free....beer?  Oh well.  

The next morning (my actual birthday) Charity, Elizabeth and I woke up early and headed down to Kampala via the Post Bus.  Correction, Elizabeth overslept and didn't make it to the Post Bus.  So she took another random bus down and met us in the city a few hours later.  First we got massages (full-body, hour-long massages for about $10.  Sometimes I do love Kampala) and then headed to a new Thai restaurant that had opened in town.  It was super nice, and the food was incredible.  Honestly, I felt like I could have been in any city anywhere in the world that evening.  Which is kind of exactly what I needed.

Me and Charity in all our morning glory.  Elizabeth is conspicuously missing....  

At the Thai restaurant - post massage, sauna and food.  We are glowing!  

We woke up early again the next morning (Elizabeth in tow this time) and took the shuttle to Jinja - one of the towns located right on the Nile - for our kayaking extravaganza!!  You see, last year I went white-water rafting with some friends.  It was a perfect day on the river.  The rapids were a blast, there were long stretches of calm water where we could hop out and swim through the Nile - swimming in the Nile! - I felt like the coolest person alive.  Until I looked over and saw the kayakers, and I realized they were just a little bit cooler than me.  So this year I was not to be outdone.

We spent the morning learning how to wield our own personal kayaks, and then in the afternoon we hit the rapids.  Truthfully, it was just an amazing day.  Again, the weather was awesome, the water was so warm, we were all bad at kayaking but got better, we all managed to stay upright on some rapids and flipped on a few, and we just laughed and laughed and laughed.  I was so exhausted at the end of the day though that I literally almost face planted in my dinner.  I was back in my room ready for bed with lights out at 9:50pm.  For those who know me well, you know that has got to be some kind of personal early-to-bed record.

Yep, I got the purple kayak!  Don't we look so hardcore in our super-cool skirts?  

Charity is a yoga instructor, and a few weeks before she had been talking about wanting to do a grand mala - 108 Sun Salutations.  I didn't even really know what a Sun Salutation was, but I've been taking Charity's yoga classes the last few months and have really enjoyed it, so I decided Sunday morning was the perfect time to try doing this short series of poses 108 times in a row.  On the banks of the Nile.  Sounds murderous, I know, but in reality it was amazing.  I thought it took me just over an hour, but when we looked at the clock once we were done, we realize it was nearly three hours.  It was just medatative and relaxing with an incredible view and I had an awesome playlist on my iPod.  I just felt so settled about my age and my life (both of which I've suffered through more than one panic attack over in the last few months) and so grateful for that moment.

Starting the Sun Salutation together.  

The view we looked out on.  How could you not enjoy that?  

108 paper beads - made by the lovely women I worked with last year - so I could keep track of how may salutations I had done.  

All finished!  

All in all it was a perfect week.  Great friends, good food, beautiful surroundings and so much laughter.  If being 30 allows me to still have that much fun, I'll take it.

On the way back to Kampala from Jinja we hopped in a mutatu taxi - I got the front seat, but Charity and Elizabeth were squished in the back.