I’m on the final lap, the last quarter, less than three months left. There remain 6 weeks of school, one of which will probably be fully review time. I’m three weeks shy of my anniversary and I can hardly believe it.

The time has gone so quickly. When this adventure started, I thought 14 months was a really long time. It is, at the beginning. Now not so much. A lot has happened. God’s changed me in many ways, some expected and anticipated, some a complete surprise.

People ask if I’m excited to go home. In a way, I suppose. It will be nice to see the family again, spend Christmas cold (as it should be…heh), start paying off my loans. But I will be leaving behind a lot. I have 100 sons and daughters that I will not get to watch grow up. I have another part of my spiritual family that I will be leaving behind. I’ve made amazing friends that I don’t really want to say good-bye to.

I haven’t spent much time thinking about saying good-bye yet, but I feel it around the corner. I’m just going to focus on my job, getting these kids ready to move to the next level of English. Maybe at the end of November I will start thinking about leaving.

Many ask when I’ll be back. All I can say for now is I’m looking firmly at the 21st of December as the earliest. I haven’t bought my ticket yet, but I should be home for Christmas. See you then!

-j

I’m not complaining. I just want to be clear, Lord, I’m not complaining. The weather here is so odd.

It was blisteringly hot last summer. March through June was delightful. Then randomly from June through August it was frigid mixed in with pleasantly cold. September has the gamut. It’s been 90 and it’s been 40. It changes in 2 days. I had put away all my cold weather stuff because it was consistently in the 70s or 80s, and then a day later it was 50 at night.

I don’t get it, but it is playing havoc with my allergies. It’s nice when it rains though. The air gets filtered out and I can breathe for a day or two.

I’m about 3 weeks shy of a year, and I know that it was basically just hot from the time I got here until March, so I expect the cold to be leaving soon. Incidentally, today was one of the lovliest days of the year.

-j