What a year!

As I was walking around my neighborhood in Kampala this morning, I realized that exactly one year ago today I graduated from college. It caught me off guard because college graduation was a huge milestone for me; a lot of my life had led up to that moment, and that moment has been over for a year.

As boda-bodas zipped past me and little Ugandan children waved at me while yelling, “Mzungu!”, I couldn’t help but think about all that I have experienced in the year since I graduated. If someone had told me at my grad party last year that I would be living in Kampala, Uganda in May of 2008, I probably would have laughed. At that point I still had distant hopes and dreams of interning for IJM but the thought of going into the field with them had only wisped across my mind once or twice, only to dissolve into oblivion moments later.

But this past year has been incredible. I have literally been on some of the greatest adventures of my soon-to-be 23 years of life. In my short years I have lived in Germany, spent a summer in Russia, and studied at Oxford University. But in the past year I have spent 8 weeks in England (two of which I spent walking across it); interned at a highly professional human rights organization in Washington, DC; and moved to Uganda, where I have lived and worked for four months. Amazing. And it’s not amazing because I got myself to these places. Not in the least bit. No, it’s amazing because these are all places that God has led me to. As I closed the college years of my life and looked into a vast unknown, all I wanted was adventure. And adventure is what I’ve been blessed with.

What a year!