Welcome Home

     So this post is much later than I would have liked but things got a bit busy since coming back and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write! Last Tuesday I arrived at the airport early (6am) and waited a bit before mom and Grandma and Grandad showed up to pick me up. We headed towards home and decided to grab some breakfast at a little diner on the way. I then began the lovely process of unpacking and organizing my life throughout the day, contacting people, then had dinner at El Azteca with some of the fam and friends! It was great to start the rounds of welcome backs on this end, but I must say I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. I forced myself to stay up until 8:30pm so I could try to get used to the time change, but was pleasantly surprised when it was still light as I was going to bed! I forgot just how long the days are here during the summer, and I think that has helped me adjust even more quickly. The next morning I went riding with Amy and had a lovely reunion with Charlie! It felt so good to get back on a horse and be out in the woods again. I was amazed at the trees! Not only is everything SO GREEN here (hello Spring!), I actually recognized and knew what (most of) the trees were. The leaves, the smells, the familiar sounds of birds and tree frogs – wow, it is nice to be back in my nature stomping grounds! I do need to brush up on my trees and birds, though.

      I was a bit worried that I would have forgotten how to play the piano, but after sitting down and opening up my Phantom of the Opera book and playing a few songs, I realized I surprisingly hadn’t lost too much! Other than finger muscles in my left hand.  

     I suppose the reverse culture shock hasn’t been too bad, but it has been hard to just try to step back in to American life. I feel like there was an African Ellen and American Ellen and I had to switch over when I got back. There are still so many things I miss about Botswana and I think some things will definitely carry through to my ‘American’ life, but for now I am trying to focus on the reasons why I was excited to come home and not how much I miss everyone and everything there!

    On Thursday I drove down to Blacksburg to enjoy graduation festivities with Chip and his family. It has been quite the whirlwind of eating and graduation (And getting my hair cut!! Woo!), but good fun meeting everyone and catching up with the Wesley people that are still around! It was super super weird to come back here. Over the past year I have grown out of the college stage of life, whatever that entails, but coming back and trying to fit back in was a bit odd.  Oh dear, I think that means I’m getting old!

    Well to continue with the choppiness of this post, I think I’ll include some of the lists of things I came up with before I left Botswana of things I would miss and were looking forward to (in no particular order):

Things I will miss:

- Wildlife, being minutes from Chobe National Park

- All my kids!

- Friday nights

- Friends!

- Bike riding every day, having time and energy to exercise

- ‘Life’ talks with Lipa

- Clouds/sun/thunderstorms/sunsets

- Being tan

- God time, relaxing

Things I’m looking forward to:

- chocolate chips (and ‘real’ brown sugar for baking!)

- washing machine/dryer

- mountains

- family and friends on the same continent

- efficiency/being able to accomplish more than one thing each day

- contemporary Christian songs/church

- having my own car/driving

- real milk

- piano

- horseback riding

- drinking water straight from the tap

- swimming in rivers and lakes without worrying about crocs and hippos!

- ice-makers

- not having to use adapters

     Driving has been really weird! I think I had gotten to the point where all my instincts were ‘left-side’ of the road, and now I have to switch back. I’ve only gotten myself in a couple of pickles, including walking across roads and looking the wrong way for traffic! That is quite dangerous… I just look both ways five times now and keep telling myself right, right, right, while I’m driving!

    It has been a great first week back, from here until mid-July I will be planning my travels and future in Oregon, taking the Praxis exam, catching up with people, and making my way out there. The thought of starting again in a new place is slightly daunting, but I’m also excited to start this new program in such a beautiful place and making a new home. Number four… As many of you way-faring individuals may understand, a little part of you is left behind everywhere that you call home. So my list is growing…. Highland, MD, Blacksburg, VA, Kasane, Botswana, and now Ashland, OR. We will see what the future holds there!

    This will be my last post of the African ELM sort, not sure if I will continue at all once I relocate, but it is a great way to make myself keep some record of what I am doing (really this is more for me than for you!) so I hope to continue recording my next adventures! Thanks for reading I hope you have enjoyed some of the stories and photos. I want to end similarly to the way I began, with the d365 devotion for today. Appropriately, it is about God’s creation and new beginnings. I am excited to continue sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm about God’s beautiful creations with others in my next endeavors in Oregon!

The sun gives rise to the newness of every day.
The moon and stars provide just enough light
To remind us of tomorrow.

The Spirit of God is at work in every moment,
So walk in whatever light you have,
Giving birth to the promise of God in you.

One Week

    My, how time flies. It feels like just yesterday I was getting off the plane with Kristen and being introduced to Botswana. As much as I am looking forward to coming home, each day a part of me gets more sad to leave! I did the dirty deed and pulled out my suitcase yesterday because I finally decided I needed to start making sure everything would fit to go back! I am sorting through things, figuring out what needs to come home, what can be left, what can be given away and what needs to be returned to the lovely people who lent me things for my house! Won’t bore you with the details, but the past couple weeks have been quite busy as I try to have my ‘lasts’ and say goodbyes in Kasane! Will try to hit a few highlights:

      Carrie and I (and sometimes Ketso) have been leading a Sunday afternoon ‘Teen Time’ with some youth from the church. A couple weeks ago we planned a grand finale party with lots of fun games and snacks. All the kids (including us) had a blast! This has been such a rewarding time that we get to spend with these teens to offer a safe environment for them to learn about God and how it relates to their lives. They are all such awesome kids it has been so great getting to know them!

Me, Maria, and Lipa

Morning in the park and goodbye Maria!! : ( Sad day as we said bye to our amazing veterinarian!! She is heading to Namibia then possibly SA to continue her career and gain more experience. The lab isn’t quite the same without her!

The 'slaves' taking a break! Jon, Octavius, me, Carrie, and Luke

    Trish and Carrie’s Birthday weekend at Muchenje! Trish, otherwise known as Mommy Trish, hosted a huge 60^th birthday bash at a new campground they are building as a retreat-type place for missionary families. It is not quite finished, but it was a great place for a party! Us kids were dubbed the ‘slaves’ and helped to cook dinner and had a blast singing around the campfire (3-4! 3-4! Projecttt!!) and camping along the river. Such a wonderful party and beautiful camping spot!

 On Sunday Carrie had planned a mini-olypmics day of games! Above is by far my favorite photo from the event – Octavius focusing very hard on catching the marshmallow after he catapulted it off the plate using the broom. We had lots of fun competitions such as sliding a cookie from your forehead into your mouth, flying a kite attached to a hat on your head, moving cotton balls using Vaseline on your nose, sorting Smarties candy, and a three-legged obstacle course!

Brave little Onalenna held the python almost the entire time!

May 1^st Holiday Conservation Club Fundraiser. One of my visions for my last few months with the club was to hold an Environmental Fair at the schools that would be open to the whole community and would involve many of the conservation organizations in the area. I found out, though, that there would be a similar event being hosted by the entire district sometime later this year, so decided to scrap that idea and change to a smaller-focused event in front of Spar, the local grocery store on Labour Day Holiday. I had the children make home-made play dough during club the previous week and we were going to sell it as a fundraiser (it uses cream of tartar, which comes from a Baobab tree!) and they had made posters earlier in the year about various wildlife and trees, and we were going to bring some snakes from the center down to do some snake education. While things didn’t go exactly as planned (do they ever?), I would say the event was a huge success! I had a TON of kids show up, most ended up running around with the bags of play dough trying to sell it to people (think half of it ended up in their pockets, but we still made more than 200 pula in donations!) and others hung around the snakes. The snakes were a HUGE hit, especially among the kids. A few even became the ‘handlers’ and were teaching the other people about them! Towards the end a reporter showed up from the Daily Newspaper and took some photos so hopefully the clubs will be featured in there soon!!

Knock Knock! Anyone home? One of the mongooses stops by my house to ask for some cheese, please!

     On a different note, I can check something else off my list! Last night was my first rat/mouse in the house. I have been expecting it from the day I moved in but have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of rodents so far. However, last night there was such a commotion on my roof it woke me up, then I laid awake for a couple hours listening to this horrendous scratching/nibbling coming from the loft above my bathroom that I thought could only be the neighborhood genet digging to China through my ceiling. I did the only logical thing and put my earplugs in and turned on the light, trying to trick it in to thinking it was daytime. Only after having a quite interesting dream during which a friendly wombat-looking creature had gotten into my home through an open window and settled into the loft, did I wake up to a mouse crawling across my arm. I think I found the culprit. Quite a brave one, too. Needless to say I will be taking a box trap home to catch him tonight and bring him to the center tomorrow. Poor thing had no idea what he was getting himself into when he came into my house….. he will soon be snake food!