I have the writing bug cause I just blogged last night and here I am back.
How much could have happened between last night and today...hmmm.
Plenty, plenty.
Karla and I are planning our coming up family retreat.
We have not been together as a family for exactly five years.
And plenty, plenty of water has run past us since then.
I'm reflecting on what has happened between then and now as far as I am concerned.
The last time we were together was Christmas 2001. I had broken my crazy engagement to
someone I was nowhere near in love with, I had quit my job, and I had moved back home with my
mom.
Karla flew in with Dan and Emilia who was just a baby of 2 months or less, and they'd come with their friend Brett.
I was broke and had no idea what I would do next.
Then in 2002 I got my beloved job as field coordinator for Aid to Artisans, and boy did this job turn my life around.
I gained all my self-respect back and I proved to myself what I had been born for.
The same year I went to New York for training and got to be with Karla in Philadelphia for the first time.
A couple of months later, October I received a scholarship for a ceramics workshop in Taiwan. This opportunity opened my horizons greatly as I had never seen myself travelling to Asia at any given time in my future.
I knew our project would end in 2003 so I began to explore the possibility of working abroad.
So I applied for an MCC volunteer position working with artisans. Bangladesh and Vietnam MCC both invited me.
I accepted Vietnam. And so, on August 2003 I went for training at MCC headquarters in Pennsylvania. I again got to spend time with Karla.
I flew back at the end of August to Honduras to finish ATA's Honduran project. We closed down on the last day of September.
In October my mom, Laura, Gonzi and I drove down to Costa Rica so I could see my family before moving to Vietnam.
I had made a three year commitment.
At the end of October I flew to Philadelphia, spent a few days with Karla and on November 2nd flew to Vietnam.
I arrived in Vietnam on November 3rd, 2003.
Vietnam turned into almost four years of my life. And it turned into the best time of my life so far.
It became my home.
Now, 2007, my time in Hanoi came to an end and my life in Kabul began.
I've been here three months now and I feel very much at home. I guess people are what makes a place feel like home.
And I have very much been treated as part of people's lives here.
I found myself fitting in faster than I could have imagined.
So, this is in a nutshell my past 5 years or at least where I've been. To go further in depth would leave me typing for days and It's time to get packing, I'm heading back to Kabul tomorrow morning.
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