Not that I don't want to actually write blog posts, but these do cover a decent deal of what I'm going through and are just as personal (or more personal) as the other posts. Here's another excerpt from an assignment I think you might enjoy:

The first story is about an encounter I had last Friday with Florence, the mat maker who works in front of our house:

Last Wednesday I trudged home angry and anxious because the notebook I’ve copiously copied notes into for the past month of school went missing. All sorts of disparaging thoughts flooded my mind and built an immensely overdone reaction to my loss, slowly infecting my posture, attitude, and outlook in everything. All I could think about was how hours of prep work and class notes gone would affect the giant Literature paper due in a week and my performance on midterms. These thoughts festered into a dramatic onslaught of depressing scenarios which suppressed any and all efforts to be pleasant. Pessimism reeked havoc on my spirit and plunged me into all around apathetic despair. I made no eye contact with anybody during my walk home and secluded myself at home through homework and expressionless actions. I was haunted by my poor reaction to something so trivial and how quickly it affected my relationships, bringing into question my desire and capability to serve cross culturally. Could I really love others, especially of another culture, if I am so easily shaken and unable to get past my love of self?
As the effect wore off, I began to forget about some of the questions that arose. While walking to school Friday I was jovially greeted by Florence, who I had spent about an hour learning how to make mats from the weekend prior. I was encouraged by our developing friendship and hoped it would continue, but something was different about her greeting. Her joy caught me off guard and immediately brought me back to my condition on Wednesday. Her recognition of me was uplifting and gave me the courage that despite my failures, God’s provision of grace was enough that I could fall in love with these people. Her smile was a miracle I desperately needed.
This experience illuminated a deep truth within me; a truth that Byant Myers notes in his chapter Poverty and the Poor. He uses Robert Chambers’ classifications of biases that development workers often have, one which I saw exemplified in my poor reaction to loosing my notebook: dominance. Chambers describes it as the desire all of us feel to be superior to others manifested through our tendency to derive our identity from things that we do or have, such as being able to read, write things down, and understand and express complex concepts efficiently and effectively. I realized that this comprises a major part of who I am and is the source of a lot of my security and identity, as is obvious after the representative object of good chunk of my worth disappeared resulting in me beginning to crumble; questioning my success as a student and even my professional aspirations. If I ever hope to work in development or alongside the poor, understanding and addressing this bias of dominance in my life is a must.

I was also reminded of Shane Claiborne’s emphasis on the importance of “seeing the squat houses and tent cities and hungry children,” proposing that it is only when we are present with the poor, as Jesus was, will we be transformed. He adds that the truth of the church identity is only found when the church lives close to those who suffer. By intentionally spending time learning how to make a mat with Florence I was establishing a relationship that would not only bless me, but allow me to experience God in a transformative manner. Had I not spent the time with her, her smile may not have been the same, and its miraculous effect on my attitude and outlook may never have happened. God, in all his goodness and foresight, knew what it would take to transform my lowly state, and used the willing investment of my time to learn how to make a mat to touch me when I needed it most. God took the seed I had planted and developed it to nourish and transform me; to give me life.

This is an excerpt from a paper we have due this Thursday that I thought some of y'all might like:

We had just finished taking tea at around 1pm when she casually began to give her life’s story. I was taken back by how she simply proceeded to share with me her life up to date from when she was three. It was completely unprompted yet thorough, as if she either assumed I needed to hear it or had to get it off her chest. I sat back and listened the best I could, still a bit bewildered, but could not help but wander off during parts of her life. I pulled hard on the reigns of my mind, but to no avail; my thoughts ran wild. I was distracted by the readings I had to do, the papers (like this one) I had to write, and even the birds outside the widow. I interacted with her the way I might a textbook; zoning out for all the details but catching the main points enough to answer intelligibly. I began to feel guilty that my mind refused to listen, but the guilt soon became a distraction of its own. I decided to stick to the affirmative grunt and nod and hoped I could coast through undetected.
As she neared the end of her story she began to talk about the importance of education, concluding by encouraging me that if I studied hard I could do anything I wanted. This struck me as particularly profound (and a bit out of line with what we’ve learned about the community centered African worldview) in light of her life’s story, which I thought I’d totally missed, and I caused me to question what I honestly wanted in life. Before I had much time to think, she changed tracks and began talking about how she expects to be there for my graduation and my wedding. Still hesitant to immediately respond to anything flatly stated, I held back anticipating the catch. There was none. She sincerely planned on attending my graduation ceremony and my wedding (whenever that happens). I was dumbfounded at her sincerity and quickly grew cynical as all my logic and reason failed to produce any viable reason for her to do such a thing. How could she even afford it? My assumptions about financial prudence, wisdom, and practicality locked up as she proceeded to gently instruct me as to how love worked.
There I was, awestruck by the simplicity and greatness of what she described as if it were from the mouth of an angel; not sure if it was real or how to receive it. The guilt I had from not being able to pay attention to her story briefly intensified as she spoke, but was quickly replaced by utter humility as I saw the enormity of God’s blessing unfold before me. The purity of her explanation of how the love for her son was far too big for any airline ticket to hold back landed before me like the precious pearl or buried treasure one would sell everything for. I was astounded at how after only two months of knowing this woman she was willing to save up for more than a year in order to make it to my graduation, a ceremony I have often failed to see the hype in… perhaps until now.
God was showing me, due to no efforts of my own, how people are to love each other. This love epitomized the kind of relationships prevalent in traditional African culture as it assumes “what it means to be in the first ancestor, to live in the organism…, to be him [Christ], his blood still coursing the living veins, his soul infused in the body,” (Taylor, 82). I had become one with my host mother across the ethnic and geographical lines that so often disfigure the body of believers (Sider, 81), lines which required her to give beyond her means, giving as much as she could, voluntarily (Sider, 84). My mom’s desire echoed the desire of the Kerr couple Sider described as “wanting to share their lives and influence wherever possible.” (Sider, 186). Mom was truly “unconditionally sharing her life with other members of Christ’s body.” (Sider, 206), causing me to fully embrace and wrestle with Sider’s crucial question: have I committed myself to be a bother or son to others so unreservedly that I enjoy far-reaching liability, availability, and accountability to them? (Sider, 214).

So last Friday was independence day, and we had the day off. That weekend we were heading out to Luweero for a weekend trip to visit a local Catholic priest and internationally known Anglican priest, as well as visit a school supported by Compassion International. We'd be gone all day Saturday and arrive back Sunday evening. As luck would have it, I was completely out of clean clothes come Friday, having only one pair of socks, no underwear (!), and a bathing suit. TGIF takes on a whole new meaning when you've got a weekend trip and no clean clothes. After watching a movie they were showing at school ("War Dance"- good movie!) and eating lunch, I trekked home to face the monstrous pile of laundry. Wearing only my bathing suit and a dirty T-shirt I began the arduous task of hand washing 4 pair of pants, 5 shorts, half a dozen T-shirts, a couple African style dress shirts, and 12 pair of socks. Socks are the worst! They gather more dirt and are harder to clean that any other piece of clothing, and there's a ton of them! Luckily my mom felt pity on me and asked for Norine, our house helper, to assist me. She helped me get started by washing a few shirts with me in the soap basin, then moved on to the following two rinse basins, washing the soap out then hanging them up on the line. This put me at the front lines to face the daunting bag of clothes, which began to feel like the Mary Poppins bag as it always seemed to have more surprises in it. I spent about an hour and a half scrubbing the clothes till I noticed my knuckles really began to sting. I stopped long enough for the blood to appear where I had worn away the top layers of skin. I found it amusing and a bit ironic that for the past few minutes I'd been trying to scrub the red dirt out of my white pants with bloody hands; a bit counter productive. I decided clean clothes were worth bloody knuckles and kept at it, finishing it all within a little less than two hours. I began thinking of what I could do to minimize the need to wash, so immediately after this I walked into town (still wearing my bathing suit, dirty shirt, and a pair of long old man socks) to buy some sandals. No more was I going to have to worry about washing 24 socks. I'll let you all know what decide to do about the shirts and the pants, and I'll keep secret what I will do to avoid washing underwear ; )
(I'm still alive and kicking Mom (the original) and Dad (the only), and will try my best to keep it that way) Love you all.

Below are some pics of our bungee jumping adventure. About 30 of the 40 that went to Jinha to raft down the Nile jumped. From the top is me, Redmond, Angela, and tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum that woke all of us scampering on the roof at seven in the morning. The jump was 145ft down, and most of us opted to dip in the water. You really have no idea how high it is till you shuffle out to the ledge with your ankles tied together.
I have pics of rafting, but probably wont get those developed till January. We went down 5 class fives and a couple of fours and threes. Our raft only tipped once (BOO!) but I was held under a class five rapid for around ten seconds, mostly because the raft was over me. You never realize how long ten seconds is till your thrashed around by white water, have a boat on your head, and realize you forgot to hold your breath because of the adrenaline. I had the biggest smile on my face and bobbed to the surface laughing. They had cold cut sandwiches for us at mid-day and more than enough food. As we were getting back onto the rafts I got filmed by the rafting film crew with two pieces of bread in my mouth as we paddled out. That would be me.