In exactly one month I'll be headed home from South Africa.
Now before I came here a month seemed like a pretty long time. Since I've been here, however, I've realized (or, 'realised' as it's spelled here) that it really isn't. As a result, I've been thinking a lot about the past eight weeks and everything that's happened to me over the course of them. I've learned so much about so many things completely unrelated to school, which is interesting considering I'm supposed to be here for school. But I guess the most important learning you do doesn't take place in a classroom anyway:
--I couldn't learn how incredibly fortunate I am just to live in a house with both a refrigerator and a bathroom in a classroom. It's hard to really grasp that until you drive by people without both of those things on your way to work every day.
--I couldn't learn how patient I am (or can be when necessary) with communication in a classroom. Working in an office where a majority of the people prefer to speak a language completely different from your own can be, among other things, exhausting and frustrating. You learn pretty quickly to let it go.
--I couldn't learn how thankful I am for the first-class education I received for the past 15 years of schooling in a classroom. Seeing high schools (some of which don't even have proper sanitation) in some of the poorest townships and villages in both the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape has made me appreciate absolutely everything about my high school especially. Even the terrible drinking water.
--I couldn't learn how much I absolutely love, like really love, my hometown/state/country in a classroom. The US may have a lot of progress that still needs to be made in terms of acceptance and social cohesion, but at least 'American' is the what we label each other before anything else.
--And I definitely couldn't learn what it feels like to climb a mountain in a classroom. That one was really cool, and really exhausting.
I wonder what I'll learn in the last month of my adventure?
