God has blessed this squad, lovingly referred to simply as
“The Q”, with so much. He has blessed us financially, everyone is now fully
funded (praise the Lord), He has blessed us with a love for each other that 36
strangers logically shouldn’t have, and He has blessed us with so many
opportunities for some good, clean fun. One of those opportunities came this
weekend in the form of extreme sports.
On Saturday, after a mandatory all squad sleepover at a
sweet little hostel in Kampala, we all got to go white water rafting on the
Nile River. The day started out a little slow and dreary (due to the excessive
amounts of rain) but considering our very first rapid was a class V, it got
really awesome, really fast. Now, I’m not going to give you a play-by-play of
every minute of that day, that’s a bit excessive, but I will give you two of my
highlights.
1) We
ate a sandwich for lunch. You laugh but you go 7 months without a good sandwich
and then tell me you wouldn’t give your left foot for one.
2) I
fell out. More than once, but the first time was my favorite time. We had to
beach our boats and walk over a small hill to pass over the class VI rapid that
was just a little too dangerous for us to ride out. Once on the other side of
this hill, we climbed back into our boats and rode out the last half of the
rapid which, at that point, was probably down to a class IV. Not more than two
minutes into the rapid, we hit a wave that caused me to fall back a bit. Due to
my cat-like balance, I was sitting there on the edge of the boat with my feet
straight up in the air for about 30 seconds or so, just long enough to make eye
contact with my supposedly-beloved friend, Tricia, who didn’t
see it fit to even try to reach out a hand and save me, all the while the rest
of the boat sees me falling out and does nothing but laugh (as seen in the awesomely candid picture that will be posted when I get to India). So I let myself go (you would too if there was no
hope of anyone trying to save you) and rode out that sweet rapid on my own.
But
because God not only blesses this squad but provides abundantly, we also got to
bungee jump.
Now I
know what you are thinking, “Sarah Olmstead can’t climb a ladder for her
extreme fear of heights, there is no way she went bungee jumping,” but I’m
telling you friends, it’s true. I’ve provided video to make sure you believe me.
Somehow, I got suckered/sweet talked into jumping off a bridge over the Nile
River with Tricia. I think her description best sums it up, “We jumped tandem which I was really thankful for because we had
the death grip on each other as we screamed and cursed all the way
down. It was so funny. She almost puked, I almost peed my pants, but
we’re alive and while it was fun, I never want to do it again. It was terrifying as well.
Jumping off that tower was sickening.”
Do I regret it? Definitely not. Would I do it again?
Definitely not.
