Gotta Go Home

...and as extremely excited as I am about the home I get to go back to, it's definitely starting to become real that I'm leaving Rwanda, and it's leading to all sorts of mixed up feelings about my new country, my old one, my friends from all places, my work prospects, my travel plans, my latent desire to own and operate a dairy farm in rural England...klajgfh;kljasdf;lkj.

We had our End of Service conference last weekend in beautiful Gisenyi, where all of my fellow WTers and I gathered to talk about our thoughts on the year, the transition to the next stage of our lives, and how to answer that inevitable and almost universally dreaded question: "How was Africa??!!" It was reassuring to hear that even though we're all heading to different places with different things to do once we get there, all of us are sharing similar fears about gearing up for another drastic change, and sadnesses about leaving the country that we've grown so fond of for all of its lovable illogicalities. A sample of some of the stuff the Rwanda '10 crew has in the pipes:

About half the group is staying in East Africa for the time being:
MV has secured herself a job teaching statistics at INES, a university in the beautiful north, and LN is likely to join her there.
KW is going to direct the adult language (meaning English for grownups, not swearing) department of a private school in Kigali.
KG is going to travel around East and Central Africa and see if he bumps into an engineering job along the way.
EE is devoting her efforts to fundraising for her new nonprofit foundation, started this year in response to some of the issues she encountered at her school.

And the other half are most likely headed back to the west:
MP is interviewing for a big kid job in San Francisco.
JS is heading back to Liverpool to reinhabit her beloved home and teach kids that don't drive her crazy.
JS' is torn between settling into the quiet live at home in Torquay, teaching in rural Namibia for a year, or seeing what China has to offer.
CB is going home to Calgary to start law school.
JB is in New York already, eating every leafy green in the whole city.
And JC is taking the train all the way home to San Francisco, where she can't seem to think much beyond Day One back in her favorite city...

So, we're all in a jumble, but the one thing I think we can all agree upon is that this year has been a weird and wonderful one. I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of people to experience it with.

For me, the most complicated and confusing emotions can be reduced to a neat tidy pile of manageable factoids by making LISTS. So, for the next three posts: lists of the best and worst of Rwanda, and what I hope to tote along with me as I start my new life back home.