Still here

I am still alive and kicking, but at a much slower pace without my laptop. Everyone asks me if it has been found yet and seem shocked when I say no.  Do they really think this guy who has a record for petty theft is going to suddenly decide to say he took it and give it back?  He will end up doing jail time, so he is staying quiet. And if someone else managed to sneak in and take it, they have gotten off scot free. The only hope is that this kid falls on his head and has remorse knocked into him and he brings it back.  Not holding my breath on that one.

So now, the good news is, I don’t do much work at home anymore. A less good news part is I also don’t watch movies, listen to music other than with my MP3 or do much writing, other than the scrawls I can’t even read. The music thing is sometimes hard to handle when I have clothes on without pockets, or when I want to listen to music while bathing and without any clothes on at all, pocketed or otherwise.  If I want to sing along and have the music drown me out so my neighbours don’t thing I am killing an animal in my house, well, I can’t because I don’t have speakers playing anything loud enough to drown me out.

Luckily, my family just sent me 13 skeins of yarn to knit 13 cute little scarves, and I haven’t read all the books in my house, let alone the PC office, and the kids still want to hang out even though the computer is gone. (This helps reassure me they didn’t take it, or they would be hanging out with it and not me, for sure.)

I have more time to plan and scheme for my many upcoming trips.  From last June until now, I haven’t done any travelling in Africa due to my heavy workload. Except home for my Dad’s funeral and Germany for 10 days, I have only seen the Gaborone and Johannesburg airports.   

Now, while I am still very busy, I committed to two things for the remainder of my service, in addition to my current projects. One was to not carry my laptop to work each day (problem solved!) and the second was to travel more and visit other volunteers in Botswana and surrounding countries.

I have a trip scheduled for Cape Town for the South African International Jazz Festival. Randomly enough, the daughter of Gordy and Joan Camphill lives there, and they will be visiting her the same time I am in town, so I might get to see them there. (Note to mom – maybe they can bring me something...lol)  I have another trip scheduled to the other side of South Africa again in June  for a Rotary convention in the Drakenburg mountain area. Since that will be a winter time trip, we will see snow and freeze our buttocks. Yippee.

I even have a trip scheduled home to go to my BFF’s wedding in late June where I will also get to see as many of my nieces as possible, along with my only nephew on another “cousins” trip.  This time, we are doing San Francisco which is one of my favourite places in the whole world! While this doesn’t count as an African trip, I do get to buy a wedding gift from Africa and spend time in the Jo’burg airport again. Oh, and spend ALOT of time in the Dubai airport, which I guess also isn't Africa but it is somewhere I have never been before. (The cheapest route between two points is not a straight line, I can tell you that.)

I hope to travel up north to see the elephant’s and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, though I may end up having to go via the Zambia side if the president of Zimbabwe continues to act in his own presidential way. By then, another winter here will be over and I will be coasting through my last 9 months of service, and may try to fit one more trip in before they lock us down for the last three months.  Then, if things go one way I am thinking, I might head to Europe for a Rotary conference in Lisbon and a month or so of studying Spanish in Spain or French in France. Still haven’t decided on which and where. 

Or maybe I will sign up for a third year of service.  Be still my heart. No, probably not. All the above travelling costs money I am not making, so in reality I would probably have to get a real, paying job to do half of all the stuff I just listed...sigh.  So much to do, so little money.

It is nice to have a comparatively open slate or canvas before me even if it is only in my mind.  Simply not knowing what I will do after service at this point is refreshing. Maybe when I get closer I will freak out, but now I like the wide open vista. I figure when I finally settle back home, I will be working my remaining buttock off, so I need to do some of these things while I can, right?