old things, new things, firsts and lasts

Jan and I went grocery shopping today. Nothing out of the ordinary: fruit/vegetable market, meat market, bread & cheese at supermarket #1, coffee and canned goods at supermarket #2, pharmacy, Chicken Republic.

But it wasn't ordinary. It was the last time.

I'm out of time. No need for more shopping. That was it. So I brought my camera and took pictures at almost every place. Before I took his picture, I told our Hausa fruit seller that it was my last time shopping in Abuja, but he was more concerned that when I come back to Nigeria (no "if," just "when") I will be bringing him a digital camera as nice as my own. Oh, I'm going to miss responding to oyibo.

It's also my last weekend of planning lessons (THREE CHEERS!). I'm definitely not going to miss surrendering my Sunday afternoons to that ordeal! It's going to be an easy and fun week at school. Report cards are finished and the kids know it. It's just formalities now...so we're playing vocab games and reading aloud in my classes. I'm even making a Jeopardy game on PowerPoint! (Incorporating technology into my lessons what?)

On a new and exciting note, we had a visitor today, a young woman who is interviewing for a position at the school. If she accepts the job, she would live in the flat, so I gave her the tour and told her of my experiences here. It was such an out-of-body moment...how have I come so far that I'm in the position to give practical advice and living tips to someone else?

I'm doing the same thing virtually for another woman in the USA. I gave her this blog address (Hi, Tammy!) so she can read of my experiences. She's asking so many great questions...some of which I knew to ask a year ago, and some I didn't think to ask. It's still surreal that I'm on the other end of the question asking/answering conversation. When did I get to be knowledgeable enough about living in Abuja to share my experiences with someone else??? Strange.

Thank you for your words of encouragement recently. I know I was strong enough to come here (or maybe foolish enough?) and now I'm strong enough to leave. Ugh, enough cheesiness for today. I've been getting too sentimental lately!