Ho Ho Ho and stuff

Merry Christmas!

And Merry Christmas Eve! Literally my favorite day of the year. Archer Christmas Eve's are THE BEST with these people

We miss Liz a lot this year, those people in Williamsburg, VA are lucky to have her. But we are excited to have the Millers join the extravaganza...Thanksgiving AND Christmas together?! perfection.

We are preparing ourselves for

shrimp

smoked oysters (ew...have to eat one every year. tradition, tradition)

sausage and cheese and crackers

rolls

flank steak

baked potatoes

salad

fruit salad

peppermint marshmallow brownies

playing Don't Eat Pete

wearing mom sweaters and Christmas pins

singing The Twelve Days of Christmas

hearing the Father's bear their testimonies

singing Christmas songs around the piano

driving around the neighborhood to see the luminarias

singing Happy Birthday to Jesus

sleeping in the basement with the sibs

but most importantly, celebrating the birth and life of our Savior

I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ and His life and example. He truly is the Savior of the World, our Redeemer, our Advocate with the Father. I love Him and I know He lives.

have a very merry christmas

escuela

I never liked school growing up. In fact, I kind of hated it. I would kick and thrash in my bed and then stomp around my room in the morning just to show my mom how much I did not want to go to school. I was a little out of control. I like learning, but there is just something about school that doesn't jive with me.

That's why I protested becoming a teacher for so long.

Going into college I was set on majoring in dance education. That didn't work out so well, but it took me a year of anxiety and frustration to accept that dance wasn't the right path for me--I was fighting to keep dance my future because that is what I had always planned. I started exploring my options...political science, international relations, nutrition, english, and finally decided on Geography with a minor in International Development. I was going to learn about the world and how to save it. Elementary Education was always prodding me, but I constantly ignored it, because if I hated school so much growing up, why would I want to make it my career?!

Throughout all of this time of searching, no matter what I decided upon I always felt like something was missing. I thought it was just that I missed dance, so I took more dance classes. I thought it was that I missed singing all the time, so I took voice lessons. I thought it was that I missed being super busy, so I joined a club and started searching for jobs or plays to try out for. None of those things filled the gap though...I couldn't figure out what was missing in my life.

In Uganda we were busy with lots of projects, builidng stoves, trying to set up outreaches with HIV/AIDS positive youth, trying to make home visits work, going to lots of meetings...we always had a lot going on. But Stacey, Liz and I were talking one day and we all felt like we needed to do something with a school or a children's home, we felt like something was missing. We looked in our handbook at last year's contacts to see if there were any schools or orphanages they worked with that we had not contacted yet. We found one--Seya Primary School and a connected children's home under the care of Pastor Josiah. We didn't have a phone number, just the name of the school so we jumped on boda's and hoped that they knew where to take us. When we got to the children's home they knew exactly who we were and told us that they had been trying to contact us for a few weeks but did not have the right phone number. They were so excited and so welcoming, and we started teaching at Seya the next week.

We all fell in love. Definitely my favorite place in Uganda. Such incredible people and amazing kids.

When I got home, I knew what I needed to do. I knew what was missing in my life. Teaching. I had ignored it long enough. I had finally taught and realized how much I loved it and how much I wanted to work with kids. It was so much fun and so rewarding and soo hilarious. And bonus point: education is needed everywhere in the world. In fact, education is the solution to many of the worlds problems. Educate your children and you will have a more productive generation, ending a cycle of poverty.

So I'm going to be a teacher. That something missing feeling is gone! You can call me Miss Aly. or Miss Archer. I'm going to be that teacher that makes kids love going to school. I'm SO excited to finally start my classes next semester, this last semester was rough trying to get myself to do anything. Generals and pre-reqs are not my favorite.

On Saturday I got to watch the 2 boys that I nannied two summers ago. The 6 year old told me that he learned how to play a new song on the piano: "Road to Joy". I asked him if he meant "Ode to Joy" and he insisted for several minutes that no, it was indeed "Road to Joy". He didn't believe me that it wasn't until he saw the name of the song in his piano book. It was hilarious. Kids are so funny and I can't wait to work with them...hopefully teaching will be my Road to Joy

beef time

last night we had an archer cousin party and played a wild game of catch phrase. we learned some really valuable lessons:

no one knows what lurid means but you sound really smart if you use it in a sentence. so use it as much as possible.

Saskatchewan is a province in Canada, not a species of humans like Neanderthals

there are easier ways of describing gum than saying "something you chew, but not tobacco" marijuana? no, gum

no one knows what inky means either. probably used as "it was an inky night"

beef time does not exist. prime time does.

when you are guessing "glue" and the catch phrase holder is shouting NO! NOO! IT'S NOT GLUE! you should probably stop guessing "glue"

hoot'nanny.

I love my extended family. They are so hilarious and so fun to be around. We had dinner with my mom's side tonight and they are also so so great. Naturally, we played a little catch phrase with them too. And Tanner may have drooled on innocent Kaydee's head from the second floor.

15 more days until my whole family is together for Christmas in Colorado. the plan of happiness makes me happy because I get to be with my family forever

we shout for the advice, what shall we do?

Yesterday was World AIDS Day. And I actually knew about it, without my public health sister or brother-in-law telling me. I meant to post this yesterday but got distracted, but better late than never.

In Uganda it was so crazy to me that I knew people with AIDS. You always hear about it but it never hit me how huge of a tragedy it is until I met some really amazing people who have the virus. I remember meeting with the HIV/AIDS positive group, called Live Positively, and being so incredibly inspired by them. Every single person in the group has HIV or AIDS, and their objective is to give support to each other, spread awareness about the virus, and teach people that they can still live positive, fulfilling lives even if they are HIV positive. They were so optimistic, so grateful for everyday they have to live, and so welcoming of new people. In Africa there is a stigma attached to AIDS, that if you have it you are a bad, wicked person. But that is so wrong. Many people are innocent victims of this disease--who got it from an unfaithful partner, or from mother-to-child-transmission.

In my International Health class we were learning about AIDS and our teacher asked if we thought AIDS was really the tragedy that it is talked up to be. One girl said it wasn't because the disease is preventable, and that typhoid is more of a tragedy because you can get it just from people coughing near you. But I disagree. I think that makes it more of a tragedy. AIDS is so preventable, but yet millions of people are still infected and millions are dying.

This summer in Uganda we had an AIDS Extravaganza...or rather a Mega-Youth Festival as they called it. Sidenote, Kristie gave me the idea..she's a legend. We wanted to remove the stigma of AIDS, to inspire and show the people of Lugazi that they need to help each other fight this disease. It was a huge success. We had tons of schools perform, women's group's performed, and even the HIV/AIDS group I talked about earlier did a dance to "We're All In This Together" with some of our volunteers. Not gonna lie, I got emotional watching it haha. It was so great. We had free HIV testing and then 3 of us got to tell people their results and do counseling with them. I even got tested...and I'm negative. It was an amazing experience to talk to the people individually and ask them how they would feel if they found out they were HIV positive. Or if their test came out negative, what they would do to keep it negative. They were all SO relieved and SO happy when we told them their results were negative. And some of these were 12 and 13 year olds. I definitely was not concerned with getting infected with HIV when I was 12. I probably didn't even know what it was.

My dad told me last week that one of his best friends from high school died of AIDS a few years ago. That seriously blows my mind. You never hear of that happening in the US these days. AIDS is such a devastating disease and I wish we could just make people change their behavior so that slowly, this disease could start going away.

Anyways, I wanted to share a video from Uganda. These girls are all orphans whose parents died of AIDS. There are more parts to the song, where they describe the disease and the symptoms and act it out a little bit, this is just the chorus. The first time they sang this song for us the two girls on the right started crying and could not finish the song. It was heartbreaking.

I've been singing this the past two days. And everyday in Uganda after we heard it, it gets stuck in your head



So, Happy World AIDS Day. Maybe this year they will discover a vaccine to combat AIDS