Day 8: Happy Birthday Shane!

​Hey fam bam, bet your missing me ;) please don’t send Emma over here you can keep her!!
 
Today I get the privilege of writing Shane’s Birthday blog, so shout out to Shane, happy birthday mate the big 21! Our day started like most others, warm, stuffy, needing another shower after only having one less than 9 hours ago!! However, with a mini sleep in. 8:00am was breaky a get your own kind of meal where I had lovely cornflakes with some rather warm milk, yum (not). After we had all finished with our breakfast we headed to church for a 9:00am start which “Africa time” it started eventually… 

Church was very interesting coming from a non-Christian point of view the service was in one word was vibrant. Their ability to translate, involve and welcome our Australian team was incredible after knowing us for a solid 3 seconds. The service was something Aussies would call quite long (2.5 hours) but very eventful with a live chicken, a lot of unknown words, singing and a bit of a boogie it was far from boring.
 
After church we made the short waddle back to Suubi House for a few minutes, where we had a delicious much needed chocolate cake for Shane made by the glorious Juliette! And then we made our way into Jinja town, to the Jinja Boat Club which was literally not Africa I swear beautiful grass land right on the edge of the Victoria lake (very fitting for most of us, #NSWaleian’s missing out) which as it turns out is the beginning of the Nile River who knew. After a lunch of your choice we took a very relaxing but sketchy river cruise on the Victorian/Nile where we stopped in the middle of the 2km wide lake to an island no bigger than our boat with 2 tiny houses on them it was just so out of the ordinary (#onlyinAfrica).  After our little boat cruise where I conveniently forgot to put sunscreen on one arm (yes now I have one red arm) we headed into town for a couple of hours shopping (your welcome family)…
 
Then we headed down back streets after backstreets to a beautiful spot again for dinner. A restaurant called the black lantern where in true schoolies tradition we had a couple of bevs and just had a great night celebrating Shanes Birthday, our life long friends we have made and the adventure that is still ahead of us!
 
Honestly this team has given me the strength and love I needed after a strugglesome year, to push forward and enjoy my life and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with these people, so thankyou, everyone <3
 
- Claire