Week #2 concludes

You’ll be happy to know that it's not rainy today, so I’m anticipating that I’ll be able to write an update without incident. (I can feel your excitement.)

This past week, I’ve started to feel a little more settled--I think I’m moving from feeling like a visitor (as on the two weeks I was here in May) to being more at home here. The upcoming week will be our last week of orientation, and our schedule will more closely resemble what our usual schedule will look like during the year. It’ll be nice to have a little more room in the day for things like...breathing. =)

This past week has been full of a lot of team building-type stuff, as well as many discussions on culture, culture shock, and worldview, as we start to anticipate engaging more fully with the culture here in South Africa. Though we've done a few service projects, we've had a lot of team interaction as well. It's been a challenge for me as I’ve started observing more closely how I interact with others in a team setting. I always hated group projects. =) This will be a year of living together in close community, and it’s been both difficult and rewarding for me thus far as I start to see in deeper ways what living out the whole “body of Christ” thing can look like.

I'm not going to give a play-by-play of the week--hopefully the daily photos will give you some idea of the past week--but I will say that I drove here for the first time on Friday. Yes, on the other side of the road and the other side of the car. Go me.