Too long

I can’t believe it’s been 3 months since I last wrote something on here. Well, I guess I can but I’ll pretend to be shocked at myself anyway.

So where have I been/what have I been doing during this lengthy hiatus? I’m sure whoever is still reading this blog has been well kept up to date on my life but I’ll just recap for the sake of posterity. I’m sure once all of this Peace Corps South Africa business is said and done I’ll want to look back on it all and reminisce.

So during the December holidays I made a super last minute decision to go home to good old America. I’d been going through a bit of a rough patch and desperately needed a break from all things Peace Corps and South Africa. The plantar fasciitis that I wrote about in a previous post was continuing and only getting worse. I was doing my best to stay off my feet which didn’t help much but did lead to rapid weight gain which just put me into a total funk. I didn’t think the planned coastal vacation in this country would be much fun if I was in pain and feeling crummy about my body. So I flew on home to the snowy white midwest and had a grand 3 weeks of family time, friend catching-up time, and relaxing at home time. I went to the gym just about every day it was open and ate foods I had missed. Life was good. The cold and dreariness of the Iowa winter was a compelling enough reason to get back on the plane to sunny South Africa though. The already too-long travel back to SA turned out to be even longer though. My flight to Frankfurt where I was supposed to transfer ended up being diverted to Toronto in an emergency landing. A bit scary at the time, we later found out it was due only to the pilot spilling coffee on the radio communication system but forced me to spend an extra night in America. I left Iowa on the 3rd and didn’t get back to South Africa until the 6th, due to all of the trouble. I think after four days of travel I was the most exhausted I had ever been in my life and that was probably the most nightmarish travel experience I’ve ever had. The fact that it made international news, however, made me feel just a bit special and the fact that I got to eat the smoked salmon business-class (I used my miles to upgrade since I had the stomach flu) appetizer twice made up for it a little.

Since coming back life has been pretty much back to normal. There was very little weirdness in coming back to the village. I did have a little frustration in my first week back though in which I got sick, my electric kettle broke, and I had a pretty bad flare up of a smoke allergy when my host family butchered a cow and cooked the smoke over an outdoor fire for two days straight. It was an unfortunate sort of a week but once it all passed I was in much better spirits. My feet definitely started to feel a lot better while I was home and once I got back they gradually started getting worse. But I persisted in pestering Peace Corps about the problem and Washington has come up with the solution of buying me a bike and a new pair of running shoes. I’m just waiting for this promise to come true. I’ll believe it when I see it. In any case, the time I spent at home was exactly what I needed. I came back feeling refreshed and renewed and had even managed to lose some weight while I was home so I’m feeling much more like myself.

Now that I’m back in my South African groove, I’ll try to stay more on top of the blog updates. If not for my audience (that I imagine may no longer exist), then for posterity.