A New Beginning

My trip to Africa has been such a roller coaster of emotions, growth, meaning and constant change. I have learned things about me, about others, about this place, but most of all I have learned about people. I am a people person, I enjoy spending time with people and learning about them and listening to their stories. I also like to observe people, kind of like a stalker, but in a good way.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to Peace House Secondary School in Arusha, a school built from a dream of an American family from Minnesota. They had an open house, so that people could come and visit and see what they have been learning, and look at the school grounds and just know more about it. It was amazing, I mean really amazing. These kids had been practicing skits, and dances, and songs, and exhibitions, and they all knew what they were supposed to be doing and they were happy about it. I mean beaming! I don´t know what was your experience in school, but for me these things just made me nervous, a bunch of people I didn´t know, who came to visit and to whom we had to talk, it was just hell on earth, even the end of the year parties, or Christmas program, it was a hassle. Now these boys and girls were just excited about it, and worked so hard. Peace House Secondary School, is a normal school in many ways, but it changes lives, most kids there come from problematic families, or they are orphaned kids and this was their opportunity for education. I want to be a teacher one day, a real one, and as a teacher that is exactly my aim to change my students life, to help them reach out for their dreams, because I believe that if children have people surrounding them who believe in them, they are capable of amazing things.
Yesterday again I was not there to change, but to be changed. One girl just came up to me and said "I am happy to see your face here, I am happy you came." Well I was so happy too that I could go, and that I got to meet her. Another boy just shared with me his dream to become a doctor, and how he hoped to find the cure of HIV/Aids, I told him I believed in him and that I would remember him always, actually I will remember all of them always. I will think of them, and of school, and of the lovely time I had, and who knows one day as a teacher I will be back. I have learned not to doubt possibility.
As I sat watching a volleyball game, I thought about everything, I thought about my time here, about my dreams, about my hopes, about my future and most of all I thought about the past few months and how terribly sad I had been, and how my joy had left me, and how I could not sense hope. I just felt like I wanted to smack myself really hard.
And so I came home and my lovely friend Tait cut my hair, and in that lay my freedom, my rebirth, from all that has happen to a whole new start, a whole new beginning.
I am going to Portugal with these kid´s faces and stories written in my heart and in my soul, and there will be a New Beginning waiting for me there and I am terribly excited about it. I am so happy I was there. Because I was there for "such a time as this".
Catch you around...