I’m freezing.
Ways I know I’m back in jolly Joburg:
Well I lock my doors.
I drive on the other side of the road, when I remember (unlike the other night’s awkward moment)
I understand just about everything, just about.
I am teased for saying ‘yeah’ instead of ‘yes’ or ‘ja’.
I have access to Mrs Balls Chutney and boerwors and biltong and Savannah Dry.
The second phase of being the leaving expat in my expert opinion is a combination of acceptance, denial, comparisons like you won’t believe, longing and reminding. So there’s the second phase in a nutshell.
Not only am I ecstatic that Ben has finally arrived in South Africa because he’s hot and I really like him but my lame Vietnamese jokes make sense again. Or call it what you will but it’s comforting to have someone who can reminisce with you about the street food and the entertaining things students used to say (back in Nam...). So, I would highly recommend a souvenir of this human form, to combat grieving leaving blues.
Indefinitely we’ll be staying in Jo’burg and try be grown ups. I take comfort in the fact that I’ll always have teaching English as an option. I love that if I so chose I’d be able to pick form half the globe to go to next, knowing that I’d be able to get a job. I still fantasize about teaching in Oman (oLan in Oman…) or Eastern Europe or South America or other parts of Asia or Vietnam again.
For now however I’ve decided that if I don’t further my studies now (as in starting next year) I’ll probably get less and less motivated to do so as time passes with the speed that it does.
Now I’m an Estate Agent (‘s assistant)… hmm would you read a blog about that????
As mentioned in my previous post I might just use Captain America here as inspiration for the next chapter of blogging. Well for me it’s entertaining to explain not only what things mean in Afrikaans but what things mean in South African (really is a language on it’s own). Showing him around from lions to townships to the impressive Cresta Shopping Mall, and seeing a different perspective of ‘my people’ through his non-South African eyes.
I regret that I didn’t invest more in learning Vietnamese, would have come in rather handy as a secret language with Ben. At least we can secretly discuss numbers, directions and a limited amount of food groups.
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