Skip to main content

Itapipoca and seeing old friends.

Saturday 22 October 2011

I had such a lovely time in Itapipoca. It was such a joy to wake up to the view of the Serra and have a slower day on Friday then I’d normally have. My teaching times at the night school run by the church went really well also. I think I’m getting less nervous and more relaxed as I teach, and I think I’m also feeling more confident with what I’m sharing which is quite nice also. It helps that the students were so attentive and interested, it was almost like they were encouraging me to share what was on my heart. Good times.

Early this morning I got on a bus back to Fortaleza. My good friend Acyza met me at the bus station and it has been such a joy to see her again. She’s a good friend from when I used to live here and even if we’ve not seen each other for almost 5 years, we’ve stayed in touch. And the thing with good friends it that when you see each other again you just pick up where you left off. We had breakfast, went to the beach (which was so nice, I am getting nicely tanned, ready to head back to Norway in November and use long sleeved clothes), have a lovely lunch and this evening we’re going to Beira Mar to the market at the sea front there. I feel really relaxed. Enjoying life and friends, and feel like I’m making the most of this day.

Popular posts from this blog

Packing...again.

I just folded the last load of laundry and I’m almost packed. Off to the airport at 5am tomorrow morning, heading off to Amsterdam. I’m excited, a bit nervous, and wondering what it’ll be like. It’s been a good week at home with lots of quality time with family, especially the little nieces and nephew. I’m glad I’ll see them in April again. Well, not much to write and packing to be done and a bit of sleep would probably be a good idea too. Next time I write it’ll be from Amsterdam....

Single-tasking September: The art of single-tasking.

To change habits and ways of life, the motivation for change has to be strong, and the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to make the change.  For so long it’s seemed like the ability to multitask has been regarded as a great skill, but is it really a good thing? Recovering from burn-out, one of the effects I noticed was that it was harder to concentrate, and especially tricky trying to focus on many things at once. I’d try to multitask, only to realise that all tasks suffered from lack of capacity to complete any one of them. The challenge is that the habit of always doing many things at once goes deep, and when I tried to focus on just one thing, I found that it was actually really difficult.  As I did a little google search on the matter, I found it seems like multitasking isn’t as healthy as once thought, and that it doesn’t help productivity. Some even referred to it as “switch tasking”, in the sense that the brain isn’t doing many things at once, but shifting rapidly...

Reality starting to hit...

Today has been quite a sad day as it is slowly dawning on my that I'm not going to be here for much longer. It's now less than a month till I leave, and I feel sad. Sad to leave what has been a life for me. Sad to leave so many wonderful people. Sad to not be able to continue to fight for and invest in all the streetkids, families, prisonkids, and other random people I've been fighting for all these years. I doesn't feel like I'm giving up, but it does feel like I'm going to be left with a kind of void where all these people were in my life. I guess not knowing the BIG "what next..." doesn't help, but I do have peace. Peace that the God who called me here, and has kept me here, is still the same. Peace that He will guide me and walk with me. Even so...today I felt sad.