From the Desk of Mrs. Templer

We're married!
Hooray!

Well, we're leaving for our honeymoon today, but at the moment we're sitting in the student center using the internet. Why, you ask? Why are we hanging around our very non-sexy university and ol' Siloam Springs when we could be on our way to sunny South Carolina? Because of the federal government.

See, I need to fill out my FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). We had to wait until we were married to complete them, and now that my last name has changed, I have to get a new pin number to access the site. Yesterday being a holiday and all, it's taking a little longer than anticipated to get said new pin, so...alas, perhaps I will never get a Pell Grant.

So, if I'm waiting on my pin number, and it's not here yet, why am I still sitting around Siloam Springs? At the moment, Luke is copying driving directions so we have at least some idea of where we're going today. Also, we must return quite a large pile of dirty tuxedos to the shop, which wasn't open until one minute ago. Oh, and we rented Shrek the other night and forgot to bring it back early.

On an entirely different note, we went shopping yesterday. We had to return a few things that we got multiples of, but mostly we used our gift cards to buy everything we need to survive. It was so exciting! We got a microwave and a vacuum, a toaster oven, a big kitchen trash can, even an ironing board that barely fit into Luke's tiny Paseo. Thank you all so much for your gifts.

Speaking of trash cans, I've decided that it's entirely too difficult to change one's name when one's permanent address has suddenly shifted states. Do I tell Texas? Do I tell Arkansas? Do I tell the passport commision? (The answer to this one is a definitive No for now because they make you pay for a new passport!!) Also, internet driving directions are very silly.

Well, I think I've rambled on long enough, and it seems Luke has finally given up the search for the perfect route. Thanks for reading.
-Amy

The Countdown Begins

Well, there are only ten days left until the big day, and Luke and I finally got jobs. We're serving food in the cafeteria at school, which is nice because we've worked there for five years (put together) so we know our way around. We've only worked for a week, but tomorrow is our last day because we still have so much wedding planning to do. Still, it's nice to make a few hundred dollars so we'll be able to buy food on our honeymoon ;) !
At the moment, Luke and I are on a break between breakfast and lunch shifts. He's sitting next to me picking out music for the reception and making fun of Nat King Cole's Spanish and French accents (so maybe linguistic snobbery is our one sin...). We're going this afternoon to pick up my wedding dress from the tailor (an amazing little Hispanic woman whose shop, Lethal Lure, is crammed with plastic bags, mate-less shoes, and lingerie) so that Dani and I can take bridal portraits together this weekend. I'm really excited--we're going to take them someplace unusual, like a junkyard or a laundromat.
Alright, I'm going to be productive now. Thanks for reading.

Bonjour!

Hello!
Welcome to our webpage. You're probably here because you've received an invitation to our wedding, so let me show you around.
Over there ---> are links to our wedding webpage (detailing the ceremony and reception sites, the menu, the attire, and hotel arrangements) and the RSVP page, as well as information on the programs in which we participated last semester. You can also find links that will help you email us directly and find our registries online.
Below this post are various entries from the past four months, including stories from Costa Rica and Uganda. This is where we put breaking wedding news, too.
So, as the Whether Man would say, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.
We're glad you're here.
Amy and Luke

Holiday Inn Update

Amy and I went to the Holiday Inn Express this week, and the deadline has been moved from 30 May to 7 June. Also, to make it easier for you all to make your reservations, we have confirmation numbers for each room so that there won't be confusion about whether you are with our group or not. They are:

(# rooms)
1 Single (1 King) Smoking- 66551517
3 Double (2 Queen) Smoking- 66551966
5 Double Non-Smoking- 66554752
2 Single Non-Smoking- 66551786
1 Single Smoking- 62699327
3 Double Smoking- 62700029
4 Double Non-Smoking- 62700659

Please, please make your reservations here. We must fill these 19 rooms by 7 June in order to get the discounted room price.

Update

Readers,
We have been working on our Wedding Info page to allow access to our registries, but it seems now to be impossible (or, at the least, impractical).
To solve this problem, we have added direct links to our registries on this page, to the right.
Let us know if there is any other info you would like us to make available.
Luke

Also, we appreciate any hand-me-down furniture that needs a good home.
Amy

Hotels

Hooray for mothers! Specifically my mother, who reserved rooms for us at hotels in Siloam Springs. Here's what she has to say:

"I have reserved a block of 30 rooms at the Holiday Inn Express, for June30 and July 1, check-out July 2, in S.S. AR. $65.00/night for various kinds of rooms. The reservations must be made before May 30th.
I have also reserved 20 rooms at the Best Western in S.S. AR for$65.00/night, the reservations must be made before June 16th. Mention the names Templer/vanEttinger

Holiday Inn - 479 524-8080
Best Western - 918 524-8898"

So there you go folks, hotel rooms at your disposal.
Thanks, Mom. You're the best.

The End of the Road

I have four days left on this campus.
That's so exciting, and so weird. I'm nervous about going home.
I went camping again this weekend. My friends Shayna and Michael and I went to the Sesse Islands, in Lake Victoria.
We took a three hour ferry ride to get there from the Ugandan shore, so we were pretty far out in the Lake (the biggest in Africa). When we went swimming, I felt like I was at the very center of the earth--right on the equator, at the heart of a continent, becoming one with the universe.
And I got sunburnt, for the first time since we went rafting.

Let me get a little business out of the way--wedding business, that is. A couple people have emailed me, asking about hotels, and I'm a terrible person and haven't done much about that yet. I'm working on it, but I have a lot to get done before we leave for Rwanda, so that might have to wait until we get back in May. Sorry, guys. But you should know that there are hotels in Siloam Springs, which is the wedding location, including a Holiday Inn and some other cheaper, local options. If you want to go swanky, umm, you might have to stay in another state. Just kidding. Check out Fayetteville.
But, the point is, we are going to reserve hotel blocks, eventually. As soon as we get the chance.
That's all. Thank you for your patience.

Also, thanks so much to those of you who sent me cards and packages. So far, I haven't received anything that was sent after March 8, but if it gets here in the next two weeks, I'll get it. Otherwise, our leaders claim all the goodies. You guys have no idea how exciting it is to get a card here. So exciting.
Alright, I'm going to stop rambling now. I'm uploading pictures, if you're interested. Check them out at the "Photos" link right over there. --->

We leave for Rwanda on Thursday, so I won't have internet access after that. Have a great three weeks, folks, and I'll see you in May!
PS--I'm pretty sure Luke leaves today for Guatemala, so he won't have internet access anymore, either.

I'm Still Here!

Well, I'm still alive.
Sorry I haven't posted in...er...two months. I've been busy.
Actually, I kind of just made friends and stopped missing home so much.
Wow, so, let me give a quick overview of what I've been up to. After rafting, it was pretty much business as usual on campus. We didn't travel for a full month, except in small groups to Kampala on weekends. We discovered the best places to get coffee, banana milkshakes, and hamburgers that almost feel like home if you ignore the Asian spices and cucumbers. I've learned to bargain, and apparently it shows, because I went to the craft market this weekend and the shopkeepers immediately gave me the real price (about half the marked price). I've bought a lot of crafts. We're going to have a very African house.
Speaking of Lucas, he called me yesterday. It was my first time to hear his voice in three months. It was wonderful. I might have cried, a little.
We spent the end of March in Soroti District. We had homestays for four days, during which I learned just how huge and colorful the sky can be, how to pound groundnuts (the Ugandan equivalent of peanuts), and how to say "white person" in a new language. We walked a lot to visit the members of our papa's clan, and a lot of people strolled awkwardly through our compound to get a glimpse of us. By the end of the four days, Annie and I were a little cracked, mentally, mostly because our sisters (5 and 7 years old) sang to us constantly and our papa, John Henry, demanded that we have a Bible study before every meal (5 times a day). The Bible studies were mostly John Henry telling us why we were sinners while everyone else fell asleep or left the room and Annie and I sang that song about John Henry under our breath--"When John Henry was a little baby..."
After we were finally rescued, we spent a day with a Mennonite organization visiting camps for internally displaced people. We broke up into groups to visit individual families, and my group went to see an old widow who is caring for her blind mother-in-law and trying to send her children to school. It was really interesting, and she gave us a bag full of mangoes from her tree. This might sound American of me, but my favorite part of the day was trying to cram 12 people and a human-sized bag of charcoal in the back of a little sport truck to go barreling through the bush for 20 minutes.
We spent that weekend at Sipi Falls, hiking and relaxing. Except I got really sick, and spent most of the time sleeping or hanging around the latrine. I did go hiking with three other sick people, and we had an amazing time. It started pouring rain half-way through, so we took shelter in some people's huts. The last hut we visited was full of people drinking the local brew from a bucket. An old drunk man talked to us for a long time, and then we took their picture and they got mad, so we gave them some money and decided it was time to leave. Then we ran in the pouring rain for 40 minutes on the top of a mountain. When we finally got back, we cuddled under wool blankets for a grand total of six hours, until bed time.
Now we're back at school for two and a half more weeks, including exams.
Can I just say, I'm so exited that we're almost done?
I hate my classes here, to be honest, except Politics and the class taught by Americans, so it's a huge relief to be done with some of them.
On April 20, we leave for Rwanda. We're going to visit Rakai District, where AIDS first emerged, and Lake Bunyori, where the Pygmies live. I have no idea what we'll be doing in Rwanda, but I know I'll get to speak French, which is exciting and intimidating. We'll be there through the end of April, and then we have debrief for a week. We're supposed to debrief at Entebbe, which is a nice beach town on Lake Victoria, but the convent where we stayed before is booked--full of nuns, of all things! So we might end up somewhere in Western Uganda, or Kampala. We don't really know at this point.
At the moment, I'm searching the internet for places to stay on our honeymoon. You know, it's really frustrating trying to plan a wedding from Africa. I really don't know what I was thinking. Anyone know of a nice, cheap, low-key shack on the beach in South Carolina, preferably with a kitchen?
Alright, I'm going to stop writing now, because I have a paper due tomorrow that I haven't started. I hope you are all staying well, and I can't wait to see you in May (or July, depending on who you are).
I hope this post actually made sense--my brain is a little scattered.

Transition

Hello again, everyone. I apologize for leaving you all in suspense about my trip to Nicaragua. It has been a rather busy 2 weeks since then. This week, I earned 52% of one of my classes for the semester, but, luckily, it´s one more class that we have completely finished now.

Nicaragua was an amazing experience. We spent the first three days in Managua, learning about the history of Nicaragua and its relations with the United States. The values of the Nicaraguan people are beautiful. Nicaragua is a country where construction workers and farmers are honored among poets and warriors.

My homestay was in a small town called Buena Vista in the Rio San Juan area (the border river for Costa Rica and Nicaragua). We were supposed to arrive there Thursday night, but the journey was somewhat more difficult than was foreseen. We woke up Thursday morning at 4:30 am, and caught the bus to San Carlos, in hopes of arriving there before the last river boat left at 6:00 pm. As it happened, our bus broke down 2 hours into our trip, so we had to wait 2 hours for our back-up bus to come from Managua to pick us up. It was a really good break--we found a hard-shelled fruit to play soccer with until the fruit broke into pieces too small to play with anymore.

We ended up arriving in San Carlos at about 6:30 pm, and had to find a hostel to stay the night in. Our room was underground for the most part, but the ground level was about 2 inches below the ceiling of our room, and these 2 inches were entirely open to anything small enough to enter. We turned the lights out at about 7:30 to keep the bichos (little green flies, or large green gnats... one can´t be sure) from swarming into our room, and just slept in our clothes, because it was the easiest thing to do. I shared this room with one Nicaraguan pastor, one LASP-mate, 3 salamanders (that we know of), one 4-inch cockroach, and one huge spider. It was just like sleeping outside, except with walls.

After this 11-hour bus ride, we had a further 2-hour boatride to get to the town of Sábalo, where we could catch our jeep-taxi to Buena Vista, which is the end of the driveable road. My host family was really cool. My padre nica and my hermano nica were both really smart, self-taught, and asked me questions all the time like, "Lucas, ¿qué sabes sobre el Día de Acción de Gracias?" (What do you know about Thanksgiving?), "Lucas, ¿qué significa 'funkytown'?", and "Lucas, ¿qué es un virus?" (This last was from my brother. I gave him biology lessons in Spanish.) I also learned a lot from them, but it was by virtue of their knowing what to teach me rather than my knowing the right questions to ask.

There are a thousand more stories to tell from my stay with the Coca family, but I will not force you all to read them here. Rather, I will force a few of you (who desire to hear them) to listen to them all later. After our homestays, we had 2 more nights in Nicaragua, one of which we spent in Granada, and one of which we spent back in Managua.

Since then, I haven´t been doing much other than working on my final paper for Core Seminar, which I turned in Monday, studying for my final Core Seminar exam, which I took yesterday, and preparing for my final Core Seminar group presentation, which we gave today.

Next week, I start full-time biology study, which I´m pretty excited about. Almost every week, we leave the Central Valley on Monday morning with a backpack of stuff for the week, travel to different types of ecosystems in Costa Rica, and return home on Friday. It´s going to be a lot of traveling, and a lot of hard work.

So, this is my last week of Spanish classes. It seems kind of surreal, looking back at the last 4 weeks and realize that I´ve already earned 6 hours of credit (and will finish three more in 2 more weeks of classes). This is also my last week in San José for awhile. On Monday we leave to Nicaragua, where we are going to do homestays in Nicaraguan communities.
For the Nicaragua trip, we got to choose our preference concerning where we are placed in relation to Managua (which is "home base"). The choices range from "just let me stay close to electricity" to "the closest road is an hour away". Naturally, I´m hoping to stay in the rural environment. Also, for these two weeks I get to bring that which I can fit in my backpack. It´s going to be amazing and difficult.
The downside (or upside, depending on how you look at it) to this is that, as the closest road will be an hour by horse from my house, I will have neither Internet access nor electricity nor running water for this time. Hopefully we´ll have a river or something close-by for bathing.
Well, this has to be all for now. I have my last Spanish homework of the semester to prepare--a 15-minute speech on whatever topic I want.
I wish everyone the best of the two weeks to come.

Nile Adventure!

This weekend, I rafted the Nile.
The White Nile, to be precise.
Let me tell you about it.

The USP directors don't organize any safaris or rafting trips because they'd get in trouble if someone died. So Emily, one of the other students, organized the trip for us. Everyone but two people went!
The company bus came to pick us up early Saturday morning, handing us brochures as we boarded the bus. A lot of us had never been rafting before, and several of us (including me) were absolutely terrified about it. The brochure was full of photos of rafts going straight up in the air, people flipping out of them. We took a lot of pictures with our scared faces and tried to reassure each other by reading scripture. It didn't really work.

After breakfast, the rafting guides showed us how to put on our gear and then divided us up into rafts. Sarah, Amanda, and I were all seriously considering joining the Safety Raft, commonly known as the Chicken Boat, but we ended up with a team of four others, all completely psyched at the idea of being thrown around in white water for six hours.

We walked, barefoot and swimsuit-clad, to the little lagoon where our adventure started, and our raft guide explained how to row, how to hold on, and what to do if the raft flipped. It went something like this:

Guide: So, eef da raf fleeps, you haf da rope and if you don', you go...haha! If da raf fleeps, and you fine yawself in da watah, keep you eyes opan, an' you go like dees, and you coun' to fife, and afta fife, you come up, okay? So, if you don' come up, you pump, and den you come up, okay? If you stuck unda dee boat, den you come out, and if I heet it, den you come out. In da wata. We goin' practeece. No, no! Okay, ready? Let's go.

Me: ...........ummm........I think I might have a question.....

At this point, Amanda and Sarah moved to the chicken raft, but, deciding to be a big girl, I stayed in the real raft. We started going. The guide explained that the first rapid was called Bujyagali Falls, and was a grade four rapid. Apparently, someone took a photo from the bank at this point, but as the photo can prove, I was concentrating on the water.
We hit the falls, and I was absolutely terrified. I was in the back of the raft by myself, behind the guide, so he didn't even notice when the raft tipped sideways and I fell out. All I saw was foaming water rushing beneath me, and deciding I would rather swim than be crushed by an overturned raft, I stretched out my hand and let go.
Apparently, the same wave that threw me out also threw Bethany into my seat. She started yelling, "Amy fell out! Stop! Amy fell out!" to which the guide responded, "Paddle hard."

I was immediately sucked underwater. I must have closed my eyes, because all I remember is floating in the dark, thinking, "I'm going to die. One...
I can't believe I remembered to count. Two...
This is really scary. Three...
Four...
My head feels lighter."
At this point, I put my arms up and opened my eyes, only to take a wave right in the face. I was above water. Hooray! Then another wave came, and I realized I still couldn't breathe.
"It worked! He was right! *splash*
Ack! I need *splash* air! No *splash* way did I come through that *splash* only to die *splash* on the surface!"
Really, I didn't say any of that. I was hyperventalating.
Finally, I saw the rescue kyack coming to get me. Relief! But he couldn't get to me. He was paddling hard, but he couldn't reach me. I was going to die, right here in sight of safety! I made a huge lunge and frantically grabbed the handle of the kyack. I pulled my feet up onto the boat like they told us and tried to keep my head above water, sucking in air.
The kyacker asked me my name. (I later learned that he was Bob.) Then I said, "Take me to the chicken boat."
"That's where I'm going," he replied.

So, I spent the rest of the day on the chicken boat. Enoch was our guide. You might remember him from the Bible--God saved him from death. We did all the rapids, but Enoch used his giant wooden paddles to move us and keep us safe. We always went through before the other rafts, sometimes avoiding the roughest parts, and then turned around to watch them flip and pick up survivors.
It was a blast.
Sarah, Amanda and I spent our day watching exotic birds, swimming in the current, slathering on sunblock, and singing praise songs on the verge of every rapid. We had lunch on a cliff overlooking the river, learned about Enoch's and Bob's families, and took care of the other rafts.

The culmination of the whole day was the last rapid, aptly named "The Bad Place." We had to stop and let the naked boys playing in the river carry our raft past some class six rapids, so we thought our trip was finished. The safety raft doesn't do the Bad Place, right? We're safe!
Nope.
In the confusion of all the rafts grouping and loading up after the walk, Enoch ran up to us and yelled, "Let's go! Come on, it'll be okay!" And we believed him.
We ran down a jungle footpath barely wide enough for my shoulders to the place where the other rafts were loading, and just as we arrived, Enoch sailed past. We stared at him as he rowed the boat against the raging current up to a large rock near us and then yelled, "Come on! Jump!"
So, I jumped. Barefoot, in a swimsuit. From a rocky footpath in the African jungle. To a raft frantically twisting in the current over a huge waterfall. On the Nile. Holy Crap.

And here I am. Surviving. I only fell out twice, and Amanda and Enoch cared for me. We felt like Moses, barrelling down the river in a pitch-covered basket with only God's hand for protection.
It was wonderful.

That night, I slept outside on the riverbank. See the photos.
I have to go to class now!

More photos are up! My computer dies in 10 minutes, so I'll update later about the exciting Nile Rafting of this Saturday, perhaps even with pictures.