Waiting

Reflecting back on 2005, it seems to have been a year of waiting and procrastinating...
I guess in the balance of life, there needs to be years like that to balance out the craziness of hopping from one country to another, having spent years in Italy and France, travelling round doing fun studenty things, looking back at 2005 seems to have been a more mature, settled year...

not sure I like being 'mature and settled'

When you embark on any cross-cultural work and live for a significant length of time in any country, no one tells you that you will never again be completely satisfied with living in one particular country... (they save that for when you are trying to get your head around moving back to the UK) Put me in the middle of France and I'm as a happy as a Frenchman with a beret, string of onions and a bike, send me to Italy and I'll blend in effortlessly with the locals swanning round the piazzas with my dark sunglasses and curls... My only major experience of culture shock was when I arrived in the USA, but that's a story for another day.

As I look ahead to what will most definitely be a crazy year, full of surprises and challenges, I suppose I am grateful for the thinking time that's been afforded to me this year, despite my many moans at God for not acting sooner and jumping in to situations. I'm optimistic about what God's going to do in me and through me as I say 'yes' to these plans, at the same time very much aware that I'm not the one ultimately in control. I have no idea what daily living will be like in Africa, I fear it may make even America seem tame, but I don't go alone. So it's one adventure I'm looking forward to immensely...

Whatever you end up doing for New Year, and whoever you are with, make sure you celebrate in style! See you in 2006!

A truly British Christmas

This year has been a literary feast...
We saw Christmas in at Dibley Midnight Mass, complete with comic characters and no heating. Rapidly losing my battle with a streaming nose, I took no pleasure whatsoever in wishing the village merrymakers a happy Christmas at 12.30am. In fact, I think I slept through the prayers and perhaps one of the lesser known carols as well...
However, the sacrifice of leaving Colin Firth (Bridget Jones BBC1) to attend midnight mass was more than recompensed the following evening in The Importance of Being Earnest, with the added bonus of Rupert Everett thrown in for good measure...

This year's best present?
(apart from aforementioned laptop!)

'Jane Austen's Guide to Dating'

building on last year's success of 'Sink of Swim - my autobiography' by Darius,
Liz and Rob have once again excelled themselves in choosing and apt publication to while away those lazy holiday afternoons! Cheers guys!

Merry Christmas one and all...

things that creep in the night...

Whilst reading the blog of an American grandmother called Dorothy Kennett who's involved with GGA, I came across the bit about the biting spiders and snakes...

hmm, guess I'd forgotten about them

(don't tell my mum, she'll NEVER visit!)

does anyone know of any good websites/books that would prepare me for knowing how to recognise the crawling things that are my friends from the ones who would suck all my blood and make me weak!?

Answers in the comments box pls...

Some spiders are friends, and should be named as such.

Check out Dorothy's blog on booksforsouthafrica.blogspot.com
it gives an interesting perspective on life there.

new baby

no, not my niece, cute as she is..

today is a momentous day, my new laptop has arrived and with it much joy!

you see, I've been trying to obtain one of these for many years now and it is a tale of much woe.

back in my comprehensive days it seemed that everyone else in my dept had an excuse to be given a school laptop and I, as a humble French teacher, did not qualify...
oh the cruelty and abuse I suffered in having to endure everyone else in my office tapping away whilst I was reduced to pleading with the windows 95BC version that threatened to slip into a coma every breaktime... oh the torture of watching one-finger-typing Roger gloat while he painfully slowly typed up a worksheet...
And then to move to a school where the very mention of the word computer brings people out in a cold sweat and makes them dive into prayer for deliverance from the evil of the world...
(for the internet is the homeland of the devil, don't you know???!?!?!)

But today, oh joyful of joyful days, at 10.03am, my techy life was changed for ever with the arrival of my beautiful ACER ASPIRE 1690WLMi does everything but make the tea laptop with bluetooth and Wi-Fi etc etc
and, just like the interminable wait for my husband to get his act together and show up...
it has SO been worth the wait
for this laptop is more amazing than any secondrate DFES offering could ever be.
I suddenly feel the responsibility of caring for a new creation, Norton Anti-virus has a point, broadband feels like a possible future reality, my CD collection will be alphabetised... all those options that previously were things I should have done but couldn't be bothered about are now very much top priority.

Mother and baby doing very well indeed.

How expensive are vaccinations?

Does anyone know a cheaper way of getting them, that's still legal?!
I need to have pretty much everything...

Hep B, Yellow Fever, Cholera, Typhoid, Hep A, Rabies, Tetanus etc etc..

(lots of excuse for sympathy and chocolate over the coming months I predict)

and I haven't even started to think about malarial tablets..

guess this is a kind of suffering for the cause... but I don't want to be restricted from being able to care for those kids because of some European fear of illness. It's likely I'll get ill with something at some point, better to be as protected as possible... and then remember all I know about prayer for healing ;) God's got something for me to do out there and he'll make sure I'm able to do it, that's all I need to know.

But if there was a way of saving a bit of money on those Hep B injections......

I'm not being stupid, but how do you get pictures onto your profile?!?
It should be so easy, and yet...

it's official

I'm moving again...
after just 2 weeks in my new house, I've made the decision I've been pondering for a while now.
Next Summer I'm off to live in South Africa for a few years...
well, we'll see, let's say 2 years to start, who knows what will happen!

Work will be with God's Golden Acre, an AIDS orphans project and so much more, based at Cato Ridge, in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Sounds romantic...
... in reality inhabited by thousands of children desperate for survival, without food, water or shelter and trying to cope with the recent or imminent deaths of loved ones to the AIDS virus.

hmm, a challenge.
but there's hope
there's always hope
and it's important for us to know about these things and to get involved.

Come with me as I blog my way through the next few years of preparation, going, helping, hopefully making a difference and seeing what the future holds...

Caroline x
www.godsgoldenacre.org.uk