back in the saddle

I am packing and repacking, this time trying to fit in the amazing and beautiful pile of school supplies that was so generously donated to M's school from many of you.  I hear there are more supplies waiting for us when we get back as well, between all of your general loveliness the school will have everything it needs for an entire school year.  Just like that, you did this.  Thank you. I mean really. Thank you.

Aside from the supplies there have been some jungle requests.  A woman who has never left the village nor the home she was born, she has asked me for some new pots and pans, ones from the states she says, I know they have nice things there.  This is from a woman who will surprise us with rice and beans and bits of meat, a woman who I love. Of course I cannot say no so 8 pots and pans are mixed in with our clothes, the bags are burdened and straining with goodness like new baby clothes for the neighbor who is giving birth next month and the medicine and other sundries not so easily acquired in the jungle.  I even got to buy a nearly teen her first bra, her mama ordered it specifically and I felt both humbled and grown all at once standing in the store trying to decide if a 12 year old would appreciate it printed with hearts or if plain is better and to be honest I still have no idea.

In other ways too like we are re-entering something we had no business leaving so soon.  I anticipate it feeling harder this time around, the obstacles that seemed new before won't be wrapped in mystery but sitting there glaring in the light.  It'll force me, I think to get clear, to get much clearer on why I am doing this in the first place and what I hope to learn.

In other news, I'm also posting at Blogher today with part 5 in a series of 6:  Jungle, interrupted