Peaceful Pathway☮

I awoke this morning from a splendid night of sleep and opened my curtains to a stunningly sunny morning.   Ceasar, my growing puppy, stuck his nose under the mosquito net hovering over my bed, and looked at me eagerly to take him out.   I made a quick breakfast of earl grey tea (thousands of thanks to my wonderfully generous mom) and set off to the primary school down the road. I arrived just in time for the morning assembly, in which the children line up according to shapes outlined by rocks in the ground, and sing a medley of songs.   I followed the standard 6 teacher to his classroom and got a brief summary of what they were learning.   As we approached the front door of his classroom, he turned to me and said “So if you could teach about the present continuous tense, that would be great.   You have an hour until the next class comes in…there will be three classes total.” I stared at him blankly, caught my composure and said, “Well, how about you start the class and I

Before I left, many people parted some words of wisdom with me that have kept with me very well.   Though I appreciated and accepted each word with eagerness and open ears, none have resonated better or have made more sense to me than those shared by my dad: “You will feel the loneliest you’ve ever felt and learn more about yourself and the world than you had ever truly anticipated.   But take it with a grain of salt, and live it to its fullest, ‘cuz it’s only going to happen once.   Once it’s over you’ll think, wow that went by fast” You know, I’ve held a lot of animosity towards my dad for moving away when I was younger, and more recently for opting to move to the Middle East for a second time.   More and more, I’m discovering that in an ironic turn of events he has been one of the individuals in my life that has understood what this process feels like.   As a result, I’m discovering a sense of guilt about making him feel blameworthy for all these years.   It’s pretty funny wha

The Goat Incident: This afternoon I walked home from the clinic and found a single white baby goat trapped inside my compound.   Eyes wide, the poor little goat trotted around aimlessly searching for a way out.   I smiled to myself and opened the gate thinking I would just be able to chase the little guy out so he could go find his mom. What I thought would be a simple task turned into a 20 minute fiasco.   The stupid goat wouldn’t even let me get near it without scampering off in the wrong direction.   After sprinting around my yard, having the neighbor children laugh at me, and clapping and jumping at the goat, I watched as it FINALLY scuttled outside the gate.   I wiped a drip of sweat off my forehead and couldn’t help but feel a small sense of accomplishment. I smiled, as the one word that swirled around my head was, “FREEDOM!” Just a normal afternoon in Gobojango. ---------------------------------- Doing Laundry: I’m not sure if I’ve shared with you my dis