.c'est

Well, I feel as if I should write a blog - I have nothing sensational,
poetic, or well-written to convey.... just life here as "normal" I guess
you could say

am having the classic, age-old problem with time - slipping by too fast
yet slow and viscous in the same breath

I have 2 months here to go - its the evening of the 15th and my flight
out is Sept. 16......

I really don't know how I feel about it - bittersweet I guess is the
only way to describe it -

However, I am more sad about leaving than I am excited

home is here now

I love living in the village with Bikaou and Teskrio
I love buying fresh salty steaming-hot-when-you-crack-them-open gatos
from the neighbor
I love wandering the market on Saturdays - haggling over bright swaths
of fabric, eating crunchy, spicey, deepfried "haricots" (made from
ground black-eyed peas, garlic, onion, hot pepper - the consistency of a
veggie chicken nugget), buying fresh crisp green guavas, weaving between
mud-puddles and ducking under the grass-mat covered row of vegetable
venders

wandering through the baskets of tiny green peppers, heaps of wrinkled
red and yellow peppers, piles of purple onions, platters of okra, bowls
heaped with hardboiled eggs, gargantuan green-striped cucumbers, piles
of leaf - legume, alum, l'ouseai, tiny fish wrapped up in plastic bags -
baking in the sun

I love it

I although I forget it most nights, I love my job on Pediatrics....is it
really only 15 more days there? I will miss it more than I can express

I love drinking over-priced, freshly chilled guava juice, spicy hot tea,
crackers imported from India and Dubai from the "pub" - a little Arab
shop outfitted with benches right across from the hospital gate -

I love the rain - how it rolls in with the wind - watching the people
stream in from the rice-fields, hoes and mallets slung over their
shoulder, spurring the oxen on, laughing and singing and chanting, muddy
and barefoot, half-running home steps before the rain

I love looking up at the bright clear stars - I don't know If I'll find
anywhere on earth with stars this bright

I love the friends that I have made here - the people I have laughed
with, cried with, thrown up with and on (sorry Marci!), worked with, and
dreamed with - we gutted it out together - experienced the shock and the
magic and every step of the experience - and who knows when or if I will
see many of them again

its just.....Ah! so mindboggling to know you are about to leave a place
behind - to leave the relationships you've built - the goals you've
achieved, the language you've learned, the place that changed you and
gutted you and built you and confused you

its always been one of the hardest things about life for me - leaving
people - leaving places - being grateful to have been there, to have
crossed paths in that moment with wonderful individuals, to learn to
surrender those people and places that have meant something to you when
life's paths diverge - while still taking away with you the full value
and truth of each experience and encounter

i have decided the only way to alleviate undo sorrow, wistfulness, or
regret is to simply strive to live as much in the present as possible.
to appreciate laughter, tears, conversations, cultures, experiences as
deeply as you can. Only then is it possible to be able to say goodbye
without turning into a pillar of salt

but I still have two months left - can't check out too early, must stop
wasting time, must work harder and line up my remaining goals and snap
out of it and back into it -

can't let myself dream to much about my upcoming Alaskan adventure -
which, sometimes I have to ask myself, incredulous, your doing what?
driving across country to Alaska? with what car? using what money? and
what.... whats that? no job? yes....yes, you are. okay, just checking.

c'est la vie
c'est la vie
c'est la vie