2008- Reflections on the Year

2008 has been quite a different year!I have calculated that through my various trips this year, I have spent more than 90 days in a tent-a surprising amount since almost 95% of these days have occurred in the last 6 months (including my wedding night!). Can anyone beat that? Allison? Tom? So, my tent has been my semi-permanent home for my vagabond lifestyle--which has been great for most of it, although I am tiring of it. Even more alarming is the number of meals I've eaten off a one-burner stove--I don't want to count but am sure it exceeds 100! Oh, how I long for an oven...

However, it has been a year of amazing adventures & outdoor activity--a canoe expedition with girls & many cycle training days started off the year. Then 3 weeks of cycling in PEI with 12 girls & 3 other BC leaders was amazing. Then 6 weeks cycling down the coast with Chris (making cycling weeks total = 9) & then our 7 week adventure in South Africa. On top of that I also trained & practiced and am now a certified kayak guide for day trips. Yikes. So much has gone one that I am finding myself reflecting a lot these days on all these adventures & feeling very fortunate for such great friends, family & organizations which have allowed all this to happen.

All this, of course in the year when I also got married--an adventure in itself that I believe worked out wounderfully in the end. I must admit, it was a great year for me.

So what is in store for the next year? I cannot even begin to imagine. A very different one in which in a few short weeks I will find myself a Junior SS teacher of English, Geography & Math. Yikes! And although I have many plans in my head, who knows which ones will work out and which are need for our little village.

Predictions are that it will be a more difficult year for us, and for all of you (both the priest at mass & the running mag believe this!) But as I sit in a country of desert and am amazed by how everyone lives here on so little water it isn't hard to imagine that we can't all live well with just a little less...and still have happy lives with love, family, friends & meaningful work--paid or unpaid.

So I look to the year ahead as a year of new opportunity-- a chance to re-evaluate & "look wider" :) May it bee the same for you.

XO Happy New Year.