365/365

365/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

Three hundred and sixty five out of three hundred and sixty five. I just typed that. I'm a little bit shocked. First, because I actually did it and second, because it's actually finished.

Well, almost.

It's my birthday today. I'm 26 years old. Which means that this blog is officially outdated!

I woke up late after a pretty sleepless night. Late breakfast and lounged around. It was kind of lame and sad and boring. But finally, I made myself get up and go sit at an undisclosed location that happens to have really good bread and soup and coffee and, maybe I've been there quite a few times in the last week...

I treated myself to a 3:00 lunch and coffee while I worked on my computer for a few hours.

After awhile my mom showed up and after a few more cups of coffee, we met my dad and Rachel for dinner.


Rachel painted me this really beautiful card! It goes well with my mojito, no?


It doesn't take much.


All I wanted was some Tex Mex. Enchiladas with chile con carne and lots of cheese and beans and chips and salsa. Don't ask me why.

After like, two bites, I was full. But I kept on truckin'.


Sad that I couldn't finish my beans.


Me and Sister.


Me and Sister and card.


The reason for my being.


Free flan to go...

in the TRASH!!

Seriously, flan is scary. But free dessert is free dessert.


This is the real deal.


Trying to figure out how I can eat the entire thing, probably.


Hmm...flan or homemade dark chocolate cake?


Well, this looks and feels like a fat deposit...


And this looks and feels like heaven...


Guess who joined in Happy Birthday?


The other sister.

Who, by the way, sent me ten e-cards today. This one:

And a few others. She's just lovely.


I'm amazed at her singing voice!


I like cake.


My walrus impression!!!!!


White on the outside, black on the inside. Just like me.


And just like that...it was over.



























Sike!

Come back tomorrow. I've got something special for ya.

361/365

361/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

Oh me? Just sipping air out of this tea cup that's sitting on top of my old fairy tale anthology book in this dead field that I love to play in.

What did you do today?

That's annoying. I'm sorry.

Rachel and I decided to go take some pictures this afternoon right before sunset. I was wanting something to use for my next project. That's right! I have an idea! Year twenty five is not the last you'll hear from me!

I'm sorry again.

So I may use some of these pictures, I may not. But either way, it was really fun. Rachel's directions were really awesome, too.

Okay...run in circles!
Now...act like this is your FAVORITE place ever. Like you own it.
Umm...stand like that.
Turn around?
Hahahahahah WHOA...terrible.

Pure genius.

Here's one more:


MOM! I'm sorry! Please don't get mad that I wore the skirt from my $300 prom dress to frolic around in the dirt and didn't tell you!



So...after all that, Rachel and I went to visit her BF at Starbucks and started playing with this camera app on my phone. The app is in Korean so we really didn't know what was going to happen.


Rachel and her soy carmel macchiato.


Mom said, "Aww you look 5!"


I was licking the foam off my finger. That very important part of the picture seemed to escape the frame.


She took a picture of me and I took a picture of her. Isn't that neat?!


Me and my soy caramel latte with chocolate syrup or something like that. All I know is, it was created for me.










Nose rings are so hot right now!




In my belly. And half in the fridge for tomorrow morning because I can re-heat coffee like a motha!!!

302/365

302/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

Why am I posting this picture today? Well...


It's a little bit clearer than this one.


And this one.

And...










...these ones.

I love my mother. But when I hand her a camera, say, "It doesn't have to be good," and she says, "You're setting me up to fail," I think I need to re-evaluate.

Okay but I seriously LOVE my mother. And I love her pictures, too. Thanks for taking these, mom!!

Tonight I continued my path of trying to figure out what just happened these last three months. I was asked to speak at FUSE, the youth group at our church. Before Africa, I had to write everything down when I had to speak in front of people. I'd plan a million things to say and be finished in 10 minutes. But tonight I could have talked for two hours with much less psycho-planning. It was really fun to talk to a room full of kids, teens, and some adults about the story of my life so far. Missions is a lot about what you do when you're there. That's obvious. But it is just as much about the story and the testimony. I feel the (happy) burden to share it and I am so thankful for the opportunities. I haven't sought them out, either. Which is really cool to me. The RU4 Children blog, and tonight - I'm getting to share with people that I've never met before. That don't know the first thing about me.

I told the crowd tonight that I'm 25 years and 302 days old and I know that because I keep a blog chronicling my life every day. As soon as I said it out loud I SO wished it were a joke. I think the kids did, too.

It is really cool that I have a story to tell, though. I always prayed and asked God for a good story. I was a pretty dumb kid - that was before I knew that all good stories MUST have some sort of conflict. A story without conflict is boring. I have to remind myself that the hero normally wins, though. So, assuming my story is not a tragedy (it's not), the conflict will resolve. Just sayin'.

Thanks FUSE and Chris and Amber for letting me be a vessel tonight. It was awesome.

272/365

272/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

Here I am at one of the most beautiful golf clubs in the world, or something. It's called Windsor Golf and Country Club and it's just down the street from KKV, where we were volunteering this morning. We had to stop by to look into wedding packages for Faustin's brother. I decided that if I have to post my picture today since it's the 18th, I'd like to have a pretty background! It really was nice there. It looked like a castle and the food was beautiful! Also, everyone there was super rich. We just walked through and they treated us like queens. So crazy that it's just down the street form KKV, an orphanage housing almost 60 kids, facing a water shortage. Oh, the juxtaposition of it all.

For my 25 9/12th birthday won't you consider giving to Joy Springs: Project 8?? :)

235/365

234/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

Hey. This is a last ditch effort. I was too busy reading with kids and playing the pre-digital age Catch Phrase and drinking coffee floats and having fun at goodbye parties and figuring out it's a small world and perusing movie rental places where I attempted to ditch the employee who wouldn't let me out of her site and getting Thai food and watching this amazing movie called Adam about a guy with asbergers to take pictures today. Bye.

212/365

212/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

We had an adventure today! To prepare for the family reunion, Pastor Chola and Miss Pauline took us to the Marikiti Market in the city. Vendors sell fruits and vegetables like watermelons, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro, potatoes, cabbage, bananas, and oranges. It’s HUGE.

If you are a white person in Africa you are called “mzungu” and apparently mzungus don’t ever, EVER, go to this market. So today when we walked in to the crowded, loud marketplace we were surrounded and bombarded. Everywhere people were yelling “Mzungo!” and “British!” (?) and we had SO many people wanting to help us. Pastor Chola wouldn’t let us bring anything with us so the only thing I had in my pockets was a bobby pin. No earrings, no make-up. Fine by me.

But people weren’t really interested in stealing from us, they were more interested in touching our skin or starring at Amy’s blonde hair. One man wanted me to work for him for 20 shillings (about 24 cents). I said no. He said how much? I said BILLIONS. Then he said his heart was rich! But I said nope! Show me the money! And then I said my heart is taken anyway (Jesuuuuuus comin’ through)! But he was pretty nice, anyway.

Another man asked me what I ate to make my skin so white. I said apples. The next thing I know he’s tapping on my shoulder and I turn to see him halfway through a Granny Smith! He asked me why his skin wasn’t turning color...I told him to give it an hour.

Amy literally had a woman walk by her and stop in her tracks just to stare at her hair.

Miss Pauline had to buy 50 cabbages for the reunion and she’s used to spending about 20-40 shillings per cabbage. But because she was with mzungus, the first vendor asked for 150 shillings! She threw that thing down and walked away. Seconds later Pastor Chola asked for the same cabbage (the mzungus far from sight), and he quoted him 90 shillings. He ended up getting them for 40.

All in all we ended up with two huge bags of cabbages, one or two of potatoes, one of carrots, half a bag of oranges, onions, garlic, ginger...SO MUCH food! These bags are at least 3 feet tall. Enough to feed 100, at least. Once everything was purchased a man put it all on the cart and brought it to the car. I really wanted to pull the cart - you see men on the side of the road all the time pulling them! It created quite a laugh when I started to pull it away and almost hit a car. It looked like I was going to hit it, but I didn’t! That makes me a true Kenyan!

Right now we are at the Chola’s at Shiro is giving me a hairstyle. It’s kind of awesome to come to Africa with long hair because everyone wants to feel it and I don’t mind that at all! We’re staying here tonight because we are leaving for Taita around 5 in the morning. I got my backpack all ready...pretty pumped for this.

182/365

182/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

I'm 25.5 today. That means I still have six months to get really interesting. And it's about to get really interesting.

Rachel and I begrudgingly climbed out of our luxurious hotel bed early this morning and drove home to Texas. It was a pretty sweet drive. I enjoyed it and I only felt really tired once. I was home for ten minutes before I got right back in the car and drove to wedding rehearsal no. 2. A few hours there, then I drove back home, picked up Rachel, stopped for an errand, and went out to Grapevine Mills.

As we were driving back from our 1.5 hours of shopping (we are efficient, I think), Rachel noticed a rainbow! Heck yeah! "That makes for an awesome picture of the day," I was thinking to myself. But then I asked Rachel what the date was. Please don't be the 18th. Please don't be the 18th.

And you know how that ends. So we came up with a great idea: me WITH the rainbow! And I thought it'd look cool to have a rainbow coming out of my chest like a Care Bear. Hearts and love everywhere! You color my world! Spread care! And stuff.


It's there.


Promise it's there.


This happened, too. Untouched photo....pure God right there.

Six more months, ya'll. Six more months.