Claire will forever cherish the people & memories

I absolutely cannot believe that it has been just over month since I landed back in the United States. Although the very much-anticipated culture shock wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, I find myself thinking about and longing for Cape Town more often then not during the course of the day. Coming home, I knew that people were going to quickly dismiss my trip abroad, and that deemed to be both true and untrue in some cases. The people who I thought would care did care and some did brush it under the rug but I had to keep reminding myself that the trip was for me and no one needed to understand every detail of what happened.

The one main thing that I am still struggling with is not constantly being surrounded with things to do and new adventures to seek. Knowing that my job doesn’t start until the end of June, I often find myself struggling to keep busy. I do find comfort in reaching out to my fellow co-educators, connecting with them and seeing how they are doing with the transition- we are all in this together! What helps me with the transition is looking back at old pictures and reading old blogs, remembering the good times when happiness was endless and worries were minimal. I also find comfort in keeping in touch with the people I met in Cape Town.

    

Just last night, I saw on Facebook that one of the members of the senior Khayelitsha Firefighter team was shot and killed on the streets at the young age of 22. This hit me way harder than I thought it would. I was left speechless and in tears after reading the posts people made and after talking with Bongi. All of last night I was tossing and turning, just so restless with the idea of how someone so young and full of life could die so young, especially someone who was loved and known by people who personally impacted my time in Cape Town- nobody deserves that, it is so unfair. My thoughts and prayers are with the family of this young man.

    

I do believe that I will return to Cape Town soon. I am so thankful for the eye opening experiences that Cape Town gave me and I am definitely a changed person because of it. I will forever cherish the people and the memories made in my second home. There was nowhere else I would have rather been with my 16 other co-educators (and Ethan!)- these people who I now call my second family.