After 3 months of "wandering," I finally settled down in Minnesota two weeks ago in a small suburb outside of Minneapolis. Here I am sharing a home with my long time friends Ryan & Shelby and their 5 kids. My heart is happy and full. Leaving the ship, I had many questions about if I could be happy living back in the United States. I knew I would miss the ship community terribly and I do. But living with a family of 7 is, in many ways, quite similar to the ship. There are always kids to read books to or play games with, people to make tea for and chat about the day, daily meals together, and limited time alone. This kind of life feels sustainable and good, unlike living by myself.
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| Learning how to play Pandemic |
Before my 3 years on the ship, I don't think I would have considered living with a family. It was only through experiencing such close relationships with families on the ship that I realized how life-giving it could be.
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| Thank you Barki's, Borrow's, & Dunne's for loving me so well! |
So it's with great joy and gratitude that I start with life here, including celebrating some major differences from the ship: my closet is about 8 times larger than my closet on the ship (I'm not even exaggerating), a plethora of windows all around the house (I will never take windows for granted again!), eating as much raw spinach as I want, and my precious new dog!
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| Eleanor Autumn |
Can you tell I'm really happy to have a dog?
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| Introducing Ellie to the family |
Speaking of autumn, the fall colors take my breath away. I've been tempted to stop the car while I'm driving just to stare at the trees. I love this aspect of my new home. A few days ago, we had a blizzard and I freaked out! All I could think was, "I left West Africa where it never gets below 80 for this? For snow in the first half of October? What was I thinking?" Now that the snow has melted, I'm hoping for at least a few more weeks of fall. The item I've had to stock up on the most since coming home is socks! I realized that I've worn sandals almost every day for the last 3 years. But those days are over!
In other news, I'm really excited about my new church, a small Presbyterian church called Church of All Nations. As the name suggests, its fairly diverse and I love it already. In fact, I got my first job lead from someone at the church and now I have a job as a high school math teacher at an alternative school providing extra academic support and smaller class sizes for at risk youth. The job will start in November at the beginning of the 2nd trimester. The job is ideal for me as it is close to where I live and is only part time which gives me time to focus on some other goals, like writing and selling math curriculum and possibly doing free-lance teacher development.
I've been thinking about what to do with this blog now that my time on the ship is over. I've thought about continuing it with a focus on "math teacher" rather than "on a ship." I have lots of thoughts about teaching math that I might like to share with the world. But for now, I want to continue to blog about my transition home after the ship. I see lots of blogs about preparations for going overseas, but not as many about returning home well.
This summer I was able to visit two friends in Europe who left the ship a year before me. It was really helpful to see them successfully doing life and to see first hand that there is life after the ship (thank you Myriam and Floor!). I hope reflecting on my transition will help me do it well and maybe even be helpful for those of you still on the ship, possible thinking about your own upcoming transition.
Coming soon - a blog about Intermissionary, the debriefing retreat I attended last month in Montana.
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