the future

and how old do you have to be before you're called a 'grown up'?

I'm leaving Viet Nam soon. Well, it's still almost eight weeks but it feels like it's very soon. I'm finishing up with GVN at the end of this month and then spend April in Hoi An helping Carrie to get herself set up for her work in her new foundation.

Then I go to Saigon for Mrs Hanh's brother's (possibly the most handsome man in Viet Nam, Sofi and I are sorry to see him go from our grasps!) wedding at the end of April and sometime soon after that, home.

I can't wait to go home. Although, I really do think it will break my heart quite a lot to leave here. And I'm very sure I will be more homesick for here than I ever was for home. I think a part of that is that I have no idea when I'll get back here, although I know without a shadow of a doubt that I will sometime. There was always the definite fact that I would be going home, even though the dates kept changing.

And then when I get there, wow, I've no idea what happens next. With no job and no real career, no car, no money, no house I don't know where I'll start. At least I guess, I won't have any debt so that's something. I had always thought as a teenager that at 25, I would have some of this stuff sorted...!

But/

I start my new 'job' here tomorrow as an English teacher at the local university. It's three hours a week at $15 an hour. That's $45 a week! Do you know what I could do with $45 a week?! Wow!
Tonight, I gave Lorraine, one of the new volunteers, a massage and she said afterward that it " was the best massage I've ever had (she's 63), it's all I could ever want or need in a massage". How cool is that? And then when Carrie gets back here, I'm going to be helping her with some design concepts for her new restaurant she's setting up here.

So, I could maybe teach English, I could maybe study massage/physio or something in that vein and practice? I could maybe, hopefully work as a designer in there somewhere but really, I have no idea. First things first, I think I'll be going to spend some time with all the people I've missed so much while I've been here and hope that the homesickness for this new home doesn't bore all of them!
Oh yeah, and I suppose, eventually, I'd like to actually work overseas like this and get paid for it for a year or two. That would be fun.

Having Randall (69) and Lorraine here this month is leading me to believe I might actually do all of these things in time. You should see this pair go, they're awesome! Lorraine can't cycle because she twisted her knee badly a few weeks back coming out of the surf but Randall took to the crazy Vietnamese traffic yesterday morning to make the 10km round trip to baby orphanage without a bother. I love it!
And I want to be like them when I grow up, whenever that may be!