We are in Kitchener again after having been on the road for almost 2 months. Already, in the midst of our joy of seeing family and friends, we are ready to have a place we can call our home. But before we get to that allow me to give you a thumbnail sketch of what we have seen and heard this summer;
weather – As the onset of the rainy season approached in Addis, I began to feel that same depressing feeling as in rainy seasons before, cool, clammy and muddy. No one finds it fun. Any weather in Europe and NA would be an improvement over this, I thought. We landed in Amsterdam to cool and rainy weather, sure felt familiar. But overnight the weather turned sunny and cool and since then we have experienced wonderful weather. What about the hot, humid weather you encountered that one day in Friesland or the weeks of oppressive heat in Canada and the U.S.? Yep, you are right, the heat was oppressive but I was just grateful to be here to enjoy it.
Travel – living out of a suitcase for almost 2 months is hard and on our final long journey from Akron, PA to St. Catharines the other week the girls sorta melted down. We knew we need to stop being in motion and land somewhere, which we have finally done (at least the travel part). Travelling with lots of luggage is a royal pain but we survived both legs of the travel (see earlier blogs). Driving our 'new' minivan was fun, good thing that it has lots of room. We had to pick up 4 suitcases on this last swing through the states and even after doing some major shopping (twice!) at 2 large malls with great prices we still don't look like the Beverly Hillbillies!
Room & Board – I won't tell you how much, or little, we spent in Europe or even as we spent 3 weeks travelling in NA but it couldn't have happened without, as the Beatles once said, a little help from our friends (and family). The generosity of folks in Europe meant that we not only could visit Holland and Switzerland but not break the bank (of our volunteer funds). Bob would fix up a large mug of coffee with frothed milk, almost breakfast unto itself. Miriam gave up her counselling room for the days we were there so the girls could sleep in it. They gave us their car to travel to places like Friesland and gave us invaluable advice on where to go and what to see. Our girls fell in love with 'stroopwafflen' and we all enjoyed the cheese. In Switzerland Heidi and Bruno opened their home to us, a large house where our girls could hang out in one room and us in another. They and our friends Andy and Manuela took us around Basel as well as day trips into the Emmental and the Lake district to Interlaken. What great days we had! We were hosted by Aschi and Mary Friesen Amstutz, Ernst and Ruth Sprunger and Daniel and Teresa Gerber. The food and fellowship were great, we will long remember.
Wide, Open Spaces – It's hard to describe to folks who haven't lived in a compound all their lives, or even 4 years, what it feels like to be in the wide open spaces of North America. Sure there a fences between properties but nothing like the walls in Addis Ababa. Additionally our girls never ventured out alone in Addis nor did they want to go far into public anyhow. They stood out and were an instant attraction, much to their dislike. So to hop on a bike and ride up and down the streets of Kidron or Tavistock was such a freeing experience for them. I also loved the fact that houses, even in cities, were not closed away behind high walls. And of course the beautiful fields of grain were wonderful to behold, especially at night with a thousand points of light from the lightning bugs in the fields. The sound of the cicada on hot summer days, the chirping of crickets on warm summer evenings. The moon waxing and waning, the summer sun; relentless by day but a glorious ball at sunrise and sunset. Walking fields and pastures, on streets and along roadsides. No one ogling us when we walked, probably the most freeing.
Home – No, I wasn't clicking my heels like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, but there were times in the past month, after we landed, when I would say to myself, there's no place like home. To channel an old Paul Simon song, everything eastern North America, from Ohio to Pennsylvania to Ontario seemed like it was in Kodachrome, those nice bright colors, those greens of summers, makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! A feeling of release, of freedom, of coming home, of seeing family and friends again. In some ways it feels like starting over; house, jobs, school for our daughters, new city. At the beginning it felt very freeing (now, not so much). But I still marvel at how it feels, at times, like living in a parallel universe between Africa and North America.
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