Engaged!

That's right! My (not so) baby brother is engaged! I'm so incredibly excited for these two!

Aren't they just adorable?

Happy Birthday Tanzi!

Today is the birthday of one of my best friends in the entire world.

She's gorgeous, even with paper mache on her face!

She definitely gets a lot of stuff on her face!

She's pretty bomb at climbing up trees

She has the gift of encouraging people through even the scariest of places

She can rock crazy outfits and not care what other people think :)
(sorry Tanzi, this picture went up partially because of your green watch. And mostly your smile!)

This girl listens to other people, and I mean really listens and cares about what other people have to say.

Happy Birthday Tanzi. May your birthday be overflowing with Zesta and adventure! I love you SO much!

Re-Entry

No matter what anyone tries to tell you, coming back from living anywhere for an extended period of time is a BIG DEAL. I never realized just how big of a deal it was until this week. Until I am experiencing it myself.

Believe it or not, I don't really think where you spent a year away is the deciding factor for how the return goes. Regardless of where I went, I still spent ten whole months living somewhere completely separated from everything I knew. I was living day to day in some place other than America, and I still have a year of my life that only a handfull of people experienced with me. I may not be breaking down in Walmart over the materialism in America, but I still have to fight preconceived ideas about Africa every time I open my mouth. I have to reintroduce my Kenya to every new person I talk to, and once in awhile, it would be really nice if I could make jokes and comments without worrying about whether or not people understand.

It was actually just yesterday when the thought hit me that I'm here to stay. This might seem like a silly realization, but it hit me really hard that I am going to be living here in America for the foreseeable future. I'm not going back. When people were leaving Maxwell, it seemed like everyone was just leaving for an extended vacation. I know I want to go back, and I know I would love to teach again, so I guess in the back of my mind I let my subconscious go so wild with the idea of returning that flying back became something more like an annual leave than a relocation. But no. I actually have to adjust back to living in the United States. And adjusting is hard.

Safe

Looks what Starbucks is carrying now!

We'll I'm safely back in the States. I have so many thoughts on both leaving and reverse culture shock swimming around in my head, but I'm going to let them solidify before I write them down.

While you wait for me to get my thoughts together, heres a few blogs on leaving written by some of my best friends in the entire world.

Jacqui here and here
Tanzi here and here
Katie here

A Birthday Surprise for Keith

This post is a few weeks belated:

Macy had a crazy idea before christmas to fill up Katie's room with balloons for her birthday, but it never happened. So a few weeks ago, Macy decided to fill up Keith's room with all the balloons instead. His room was definitely smaller, and by the time we got our act together it was actually his birthday, double bonus!

We were all enlisted to help...

Carrying everything over

While we were filling up his room, Keith decided that he really needed his water bottle. When we heard him coming, the four of us ran, but we were so surprised and disoriented that we ended up making more noise and couldn't really hide our presence (especially when I practically ran right into him!). While it wasn't exactly the surprise we had planned for, Keith walking in on us actually made the experience ten times more memorable!

Happy Birthday Keith!