What in the world has Anne been up to?

It's Christmas vacation time! That means I can finally blog again. So, let me briefly catch you up on what I've been up to. This is the non-school edition. School post to come soon.

Way back in September I entered my second quarter...second quarter century, that is. To say it bluntly, I turned 25. This was celebrated with a pedicure with friends and I chose purple. You know, "when I'm old I will wear purple," and all of that. It was a lovely day.

Also, towards the end of September we added the lovely Miss Karen. Richard, our math teacher at the senior school, and Karen got married on September 29, and we had a reception at school to celebrate. These two are an absolutely lovely couple, and we are so blessed to have them in our school community.

This is utterly random, and a little gross, but at some point this fall I discovered this little friend. It was hanging out in my garage. But it didn't look like this when I first met it. It was entirely encrusted with little bug nuggets. I'm not sure if they were pieces of dead bugs, or half developed offspring, but it was disgusting. It looked like a walking wad of bug bits. Upon further investigation I discovered this rather interesting insect. Still don't know what the heck it is. Ideas?

Over our October break, my housemate and I went out to the mountains in eastern Uganda to a place called Sipi Falls. It was a beautiful spot with cool mountain air and beautiful falls. 

I drove, and my poor little almost-twenty-year-old Rav4 took quite a beating when we took a wrong turn and decided to connect back to the main road via a "short-cut." The above picture is actually a section of road that felt like a paved four lane highway in comparison to some of the more treacherous stretches. During those stretches we were too busy hanging on with white knuckles of fear. Some parts of the "road" were worse than any dirt biking bmx track I've ever seen. Nonetheless, we arrives at our destination eventually, shaken but not broken.

 This was the view from our cabin's front porch. Stunning scenery. Although it was chilly at night, we had beautiful sunny weather during the day.

While there we went on a fantastic morning hike through the mountainside. It was quite muddy from all the recent rain, but that meant the four falls were impressively powerful. Our guide was excellent, the setting beautiful, and we only fell in the mud a time or two. 

Photo credit to Becky Nilsen 

Photo credit to Becky Nilsen

After a full morning scampering around on mud tracks, boulders, and ladders, we  were pretty beat. A chill afternoon coffee tour was in order. Our guide from the mornings adventure took us to his little family plot were he showed us the process of coffee making, from cherry to cup. His sweet family also let us hang out with them when it started raining, and we ending up just chatting with them for most of the afternoon, while drinking excellent coffee, of course. 

Other random things:

I opened pumpkin hunting season with some pumpkin baked goods. 

A super friendly sunflower bloomed in my front yard.

During our periodic torrential downpours, the corner of our back garden will flood.
Then the sun came out in full force, and this funny bird decided on a bath in our puddle.
Uganda is well known for all it's birds.  

Next up, what I've been up to at school. Here's a teaser...