Some random thoughts

Yes, I'm a procrastinator.  I just had a conversation with someone about the brilliance of procrastinators, though.  We're a special breed, us procrastinators. 

On that note, I'm going to go and continue working on some stuff for my colleague back in Africa.  I hope she doesn't read this so she doesn't know that I've procrastinated on putting a few ideas down on paper for her :)

But I am proud to say that I did NOT procrastinate on getting my presentation done for my church on Sunday.  I have my 7 minutes of fame to talk about my life in Africa.  It's quite a challenge to craft 7 minutes of words to say just the right thing.  What do people want to hear?  What do people NEED to hear?  How much do they already know?  But I think I have my 7 minutes down.

I also had a great time with the senior's group in my church yesterday!  What a lovely group of people they are - and they were so keen to hear about our translation and literacy work.  They had some really interesting questions, too.  I quite like those old folks - our culture sometimes doesn't afford them as much credit as they deserve, I think.  It's so opposite from African culture, where everyone listens to the old folks. Good thing I'm growing a couple of grey hairs so folks over there might start listening to me!  And just because I haven't posted a photo in a while, here's a picture of a wonderful old man back in Africa:

In fact, I've been thinking quite a bit about how the African view of things is so very different from our views over here.  And there are a few things that I really appreciate about the African view of things.  I like old people.  I think they have a lot to offer!   But our culture so much celebrates youth and beauty.  And of course, you can't be beautiful unless you're young and skinny in our culture.  But yet so many people struggle so much with their weight, which comes a lot from just generally eating junk food.  I must admit, part of my procrastination includes watching a bit of daytime TV (though I also see this as part of "re-integration" into my own culture :) ), and so many of the shows are about diet and fitness and how we're killing our bodies because of the junk we're eating... And yet it's completely socially incorrect to really admit or talk about the fact that some of us are on the "chubby" side.  Whereas in Africa, people are much more open and realistic about their weight.  Because of living in Africa, I'm ok with saying outloud that I'm a "strong" woman! 

There are a lot of random thoughts floating around my mind about all of this, and perhaps someday I'll construct them into something that's slightly more coherent... but enough procrastination - I gotta go back to my supervisor training workshop at the moment!