Coming Home To a Place I've Never Been Before

The words of that John Denver song have rattled around in my head in my first 24 hours in Malawi. So much is so familiar - the style of our house, our lamps (foreign service homes all have the same furniture), my favorite grocery store (Food Lovers Market), the flora, the weather, etc. Having said that, life is full of new thoughts - wanting to share photos of the gecko with my 7th-9th grade students who have passed around my beaded gecko as we have our post concert debriefings, remembering my trip to Kenya with CHCA student (Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy - the school where I teach in the US), having new friends in the US to send WhatsApp messages to across the ocean.

And so, few photos from the day:

My first morning was spent mostly unpacking but then I headed out to the porch (called a veranda in Zimbabwe but khonde here). Around noon our house should have been quiet as our staff was eating lunch. I kept hearing a scraping noise and finally traced it over to this bucket in the corner of the porch where I found a gecko. Yesterday afternoon, when we had just arrived, another one scampered into the house which both times reminded me of my CHCA students (8th graders - maybe one was Pedro and the other Pablo?).

When we first arrived at the shopping center I was again reminded of Zimbabwe as I saw familiar stores. But as we entered the center, I had flashbacks to my 2017 CHCA Intersession trip to Kenya where we also visited the grocery stores at the malls (we almost never went to an indoor mall in Zimbabwe). I tried to unsuccessfully to crop this photo - can you see the large Christmas tree in the middle of the mall that is still proudly standing on January 18th? 

My last major flashback of the shopping trip was picking up this packet of tomatoes at Food Lovers Market - exactly like the ones I had bought in Zimbabwe and I found it super hard to believe that was two and a half years ago! 

Side notes - as I looked up the words to the John Denver song that was running around my head I was reminded of my many family members who connect to those Rocky Mountains. And playing with John Denver at the Star Lake Amphitheater with Jennifer Gerhard. Nice to know that as much as I move around memories of family and friends are always with me!