Saying goodbye to life in Nigeria…:(

I feel like I want to start every blog with the same line, “Where to even begin!?!?!” So as much as I want to say that about this one I won’t, even though it’s the truth!  I can’t tell you the number of hours that I have sat in front of the computer each time I go to write something up!  I left Nigeria on June 13th and now it’s a month later and I still can’t believe how incredibly hard it was to say goodbye to my life there.  Not just to people, but to relationships.  Relationships that are not common to a lot of people.  Relationships that are more than friends who chat and hangout, but relationships that are deep and beyond the norm of typical friendship!  Not just to students, but to “my” students.  Students who spent more time with me than with their own parents.  Students who answered the question, “Why did God create the butterfly from the caterpillar?” with “Because He knew that we needed to change also,” or “Because it wasn’t fair to keep the caterpillar ugly and yucky for their whole life!”  Students who thought everything I did was out of this world, even if it was showing them how long your small intestine would be if it were stretched out on the floor!  Students who could not wait to come in from lunch on Tues. and Thurs. because they knew we were having Bible, and they couldn’t get enough of God’s awesomeness that He displayed throughout the Scriptures.  Not just to a life of adventure, but to a life uncommon.  A life where spending time with people means more than spending time doing “things.”  Where seeing elephants or touching hipos is worth the photo, even if its not the smartest idea!  A life where following traffic laws, reeeeeeaaaaally doesn’t matter and as long as the door closes, there is always room for one more person, chicken, goat, tree, whatever… A life of unpredictability and uncertainty that was nothing less than unbelievable and unimaginable!  This was my life…And after 2 years it was more than I ever thought possible.  The places I have seen and the experiences that have come along with it sometimes seem unrealistic!  So how do you say goodbye to that?!?!  I still don’t really know…but I do know that this season of my life was truly a gift and the next adventure I am about to embark on will be a new season with plenty of “unimaginable” moments!

The week before I left about 15 of us headed to Abuja to watch Nigeria vs. Kenya in a Wold Cup Qualifying Match!  It was totally insane and there was no where for people to sit even after the stairwells were full!  We won 3-0!!!

Every time the crowd didn’t like something, they would throw bottles onto the track.  So the announcers would come over the load speaker asking people to stop. hahaha. I don’t think that works in a crowd of thousands and thousands!

Some of the last few weeks with my babes!

If I could have taken her with me I would have!  This was one of my students little sister..Darey!  Almost everyday Angel would draw pictures of me with a big belly, or pushing a baby carriage…she wanted me to have a baby soooo badly, it was hilarious.  So one of my boys told her that I would come back to Nigeria when I was married and had a big tummy!

As you know I had an amazing group of friends, and we were notorious for throwing parties, anytime, anywhere, just give us a reason!

After leaving Nigeria, I spent a couple weeks in Scotland and Ireland before heading home!

Ruth and Terry are a couple I met last year in Nigeria!  They were both working as doctors in the hospital, and now live in Dundee, Scotland!  This is where we stayed with the cutest baby in the world!

At the parliment building each office had a “think bubble” with a couch and desk where all the members of parliment could sit and think up all their brilliant ideas!

Edinbrough was an incredible city!!!!

I was fortunate to have these girls in Nigeria, and then to get them in Ireland as well…wow!!!

Part of the castle above fell into the sea…and it just happened to be the kitchen, so all the cooks and their pots and pans went along with it and died…

Swinging rope bridge!

I am in a totally new world.  For the last two and a half weeks I have been working for the Notre Dame Summer Shakespeare Festival and living in a house provided by the University.  It has been pretty intense thus far.  I work from 8:30 to 5:00 six days a week.  It can be sort of grueling at times, but I am nevertheless enjoying it a great deal.  I have always liked doing construction work.  Maybe it comes from all those years spent playing with legos.

It is sort of strange to be doing scenic work somewhere other than Bethel.  Over the past two years, I have come to feel quite at home in the Bethel College Scenic studio.  Working at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center makes me feel a little bit out of place, kind of like wearing a shirt inside out.  Everything still works right, but somehow it’s just not the same.  As different as Notre Dame’s scene shop is, the most drastic adjustment is definitely how much we are able to get done.  I am used to only working a few hours a week with just me and one or two other people in the shop.  There’s only so much you can do in a situation like that.  However, with a crew of six plus a technical director working over 40 hours a week, the progress is astounding.  We keep hearing that we are behind, but it is still amazing how much we are getting done.

The design for the show is incredible.  It features a sixteen foot wide turntable.  It was so much fun to build, and now that it is done, it is so rewarding to see it working.  I also really enjoy standing on it while it is turning so that I can walk without going anywhere.  Sure.  You can do that on a treadmill, but I have never built a treadmill with my own two hands before.

It is also weird being almost completely surrounded by people who don’t know me at all.  That is something I have not experienced since…probably kindergarten.  Even when I went to a new school before my freshman year of high school, there were at least a couple of people I knew there, and I still lived at home.  And when I came to college, my roommate was one of my best friends, Stan.  Now however, I am living and working with people I don’t know at all.  It is kind of cool actually.  I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone a little more often.  It has been really interesting watching the other people on the construction crew figure me out.  I am aware that I am a very reserved person and that it takes a while for people to really get to know me, but it is crazy to be in a place where everyone around me is starting with a blank slate.  Still, despite how brief a time we have all known each other, it is remarkable how much we have bonded.  We have become very close as a team.  Which means it was a bit of a shock once all of the actors showed up this Sunday.  All of the sudden, it was a new pool of people who didn’t know me at all.  I was starting over again.  But since I won’t be working with them forty some odd hours a week, I wonder how long it will be before they start figuring me out.