you should see the other guy

Summer, like everything else in life, comes with it's own list of pros and cons. For example...

Pro: no school! hooray!
Con: friends are far away. bummer.
Pro: get to make some moolah!
Con: have to work to make moolah.
Pro: an opportunity to relax and pamper yourself.
Con: doctor appointments.

Let's be real here: I didn't get in a fight. I can't even say something cool like, "I crashed while doing crazy tricks on my skateboard." No, sir... I can't say any of that.

it came in an envelope

Lord help me. It has arrived.

It. That thing. That 1,235-page book I ordered from Amazon not too long ago. In other words, The Covenant by James A. Michener. For our purposes, lets just call it "The Brick"... for surely if you gathered up enough copies of this novel, you could easily build a pretty decent structure of some sort.

The Brick is a book I am required to read and write a response paper to this summer to prepare for South Africa. Though its size is obviously daunting, I have heard that this book actually isn't a bad read. I guess we'll see about that soon enough! I have yet to start it, but I've already resolved in my head that this is not something I am going to put off until the last minute; baby steps seems like a much better approach to this task.

the beginning

Lumelang, metsoalle oa ka!

     It has begun: the excitement, the butterflies, the twisting I feel within myself as I think about what these next seven months hold for my life. Am I really going to South Africa? Am I really going to take bucket baths? Hike another mountain? Speak an African language? Eat strange, unfamiliar food? See stars that I've never seen before? Wow.