Day 55. Temporary Goodbye!

So I'm still out-of-date on this, but as I write this I am winding down my last minutes in the office and can only say that you'll have to stay tuned until I get back to the States and can fill in Monday-Wednesday and tomorrow through Saturday. It has been a good week and jampacked with work, surprisingly - and it has just flown by.

I can't believe I'm leaving. I know everyone says it and it's unbelievably trite, but it has not sunk in yet. Tomorrow is the march that I have been helping the Triangle Project prepare for for the last three weeks, and should be a fitting culmination of my work here. Just had my leaving speech from Theo, which is unbelievable because I've sat through so many and never thought I'd have my own. Friday night I'm not sure what we're doing for my leaving night, but hopefully it is a good time nonetheless.

For any who are wondering, I'm flying out at 635 PM on Saturday (Cape Town time) and will be arriving at home at noon on Sunday (EST). I'll see you all then :)

It's been amazing. I can't have asked for more this past eight weeks. I knew at the beginning that it would be good, that time would fly by, but I did not count on how very true that would be. I feel like after the first two weeks, every time I blinked, another 7 days would be gone. And now I only have one blink left!

Thank you so much to everyone who shared this incredible experience with me. I'll take it with me for the rest of my life.

Now to enjoy my last 72-odd hours in this spectacular, kickass city. :)

Days 45-51. Week 7, Spa, Muizenberg.

The time keeps passing more and more quickly!

On Monday, the weather was amazing yet again - even warmer than on Sunday - so after work I actually laid out in the Martins' backyard for a few hours ;) Not that it did anything, really, but the imagined effect was quite nice. Tuesday was Lavender Hill as usual - this week we did a workshop with the women on health and wellbeing. Something pretty awesome happened on the way back - we have a minibus driver to pick us up from Steenberg named Clinton, and when Clint came to get us for the way back, a guy was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. Upon a short conversation with him we found out that he was a police officer with Muizenberg Police Station, which we've only been trying to contact for, oh, the last month and a half? So I jumped on that and got his number, and I think he's going to be able to come talk to our women next Tuesday. I was so pleased with that, you have no idea. How crazy is that?

Wednesday was yet another day with the Triangle Project and Alex's last night :( Can't say we didn't do it big for the little boy's farewell, though. Thursday I spent at Triangle calling partner organizations to remind them of the march next Friday. Friday morning was a planning meeting for the march, in which I found out something kind of spectacular: the poster that I helped design was featured in an article in a national Afrikaans newspaper called Die Burger. I was pretty much floored by that! (If I plan to go into publishing, can I say now that I've been published? Ha.) Friday afternoon we went back to downtown Cape Town and I got my haggle on in Greenmarket Square and finally bought some paintings! We'll see how they look in my apartment.

This weekend we didn't have much planned. I went out of my character a bit and went to a spa on Saturday ;) It cost less than half of what it would to get the same thing done back home so I figured I might as well take advantage of it because I don't think I ever would at home? Anyway, it was pretty much amazing and so unbelievably soothing. The spa was located in a really elegant hotel tucked into the mountains a little ways away from the main road in Newlands. Unexpectedly beautiful for being so close to malls and bars and such.

Sunday a few of the volunteers from the house went to Table Mountain, but as this is the third time that people from my house have gone to Table Mountain since I've been here, I went to Muizenberg instead to revisit the flea market and the beach since it was again sunny. It was really pretty:Can't believe that this was my last weekend in Cape Town, though. I'm getting to the point where every moment I think, "This is my last Sunday," or "This is my last train ticket I'll buy," or something else ridiculously sentimental. :'( The sadness approaches.