3 Months in 3 Paragraphs

Hello readers! Sorry for the long absence from the blogosphere, but work and life have sort of overtaken me during the last three months. I’ll try to catch you up on things in a quick summary. As I get time and/or gumption, I'll backdate a few entries to give the gory details. In fact, I've already done one on the barefoot marathon runners of Namibia.

At the end of October and beginning of November I traveled loads, going out of town three weekends in a row for trips to Walvis Bay (14 hours each way), Otjiwarongo (6 hours each way), and Windhoek (9 hours each way). The first was for the marathon, the second for a World Teach conference, and the final trip was to judge a debate competition. After that, there was just a headlong rush to finish marking exams and to set up a computerized report card system for my school before I flew back to the U.S. at the beginning of December.

Travelling home to New York and Chicago was very strange for me. At first I had a hard time adjusting, especially when I was in New York. Even though I was home for 3½ weeks, there was simply not enough time to catch up with everyone who I wanted to spend time with, and my head still spun a bit from reverse culture shock. I realized how much I missed my friends and my family. Chicago was especially hard—I’ve been away from there for so long that I feel like I’m starting to lose connection my family. I don’t like only seeing them for short visits once or twice a year. On top of all that, I struggled with the question of whether to stay here just until June, or for one more full year.

Coming back to Namibia was no cakewalk, aided by goofups in travel planning by my NGO and then by a cancelled flight from London to Johannesburg. The trip from Chicago to Namibia ended up taking four days, when it can really be done in 24 hours. Back in Namibia, I felt a bit out of sorts but eager to start working with the new group of volunteers. For three weeks the new volunteers had ‘orientation,’ a combination of teacher training, country orientation, and language classes. The training went really well, and only a week ago I got back to Outapi to start to do some projects developing libraries in the Omusati region.