A Long Overdue Update

A weather report: the sun does in fact still shine occasionally here in Switzerland. Though only for a few hours this morning...it felt wonderful. But weather aside, life here in this neutral, hyper efficient and overly insured nation is lovely right now. I feel like I finally have a healthy rhythm between work, eating, exercise, friends, family and stress. I don't know why I'm always so surprised when everything works out exactly the way it should. Usually, I suppose, because I'm a perfect mess as I stress through everything and then ultimately find the simplest solution and marvel at how I thought it would be so complicated. (though to be fair to myself, the Swiss do make everything INCREDIBLY complex and indecipherable)

But in 2 weeks Mike will be here and we can finally start a life together in the same place...not only the same country...the same BUILDING! Imagine :D And the fact that we have a house is a miracle of sorts. We'll be spending the next year living in a large old house, as house sitters in a way. The woman who owns the house is in the end stages of suffering from a brain tumor yet her children don't want to take over the house quite yet and thus need someone to live there...a lived-in house is much healthier than one that stands empty...and this one has a HUGE garden that is going to take a lot of work. We're both excited to see if any of our Malawi garden skills will carry over and just as excited to learn about all the trees and plants already in the garden.

At work, things have also gotten better so that though there are still occasional periods of too little work there are always secretaries on vacation who's places I can fill or reports that I can translate or excel spreadsheets I can create. My contract will expire in November and I'm already on the hunt for a new job...something that will hopefully turn into something more permanent. I had an epiphany of sorts while writing my cover letter, trying to explain my goals. I realized I've been incredibly naive in thinking that some amazing NGO would hire me as an engineer that doesn't know anything, and send me to some far off country to train me and help people that don't have clean drinking water. There is no such NGO. They don't have time or resources to train rooky engineers. They want someone that already knows what they're doing (to the tune of 5-7 years experience). And so that has become my goal. To become that engineer that has that experience so that I can actually help. As of right now, I'd just be a burden.

This has become my mantra:

"We can never let the chaos and injustice make us so blind with anger that we become part of the problem. Understanding, kindness, compassion and love are the only true revolutionary ideas. When we compromise those, we become what we despise and we lose our humanity."