quick update on life!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a short blog post on the randomness of our life. First off, who can believe it's already the last day of October? What the what? Happy Halloween/eating candy/carving pumpkins to all!

the benefit of having your own children at halloween...

what would you say you do here?

For those keeping track, Ashley and I left our jobs and moved away from Dallas in late September to become Maryknoll Lay Missioners (MKLM) and relocate to Tanzania in East Africa.

But what does that even mean? What will we be doing?

Let us begin with what we will not be doing: proselytizing.

the o.p. (kind of like the o.c.)

As you have probably noticed, our blog is super fun. And we like to post everything, from our random thoughts on Craigslist to reasons why we're moving to Tanzania. But we realized recently that we haven't given you, our readers, much of a picture of our current life in Ossining, New York, where we are involved in our Orientation Program (affectionately known as the O.P.). You deserve a good description, right? Right!

only one letter off. basically the same idea.

but here's my number, so call me...craigslist?

In our first blog post, I injected a random comment about the pain and suffering of Craigslist. The time has come to revisit this topic.

Attempting to sell all of our material possessions was a bit of a beat down. It's tough to part with all your stuff, especially in a culture of such extreme consumerism, but actually I remember that I was kind of looking forward to it.

In hindsight, what I was really looking forward to was the sense of liberation from all of our things. What I was not looking forward to - and what I came to downright loathe - was the process of liquidating our belongings. Allow me to elaborate...

what are you teaching the world?

On the end of our second week at Maryknoll, I'm really feeling like a student again. From studying the psychology of personalities through the Enneagram or attempting once again to get the grammatical rules regarding possessives in Swahili into my brain, I am remembering with awe how I once was able to learn. Without my mind imploding with every new idea. Yikes. Now I know why some of my friends have never left college.

it looks complicated - and it is. 

journeys in space and time...and baking.

My better half recently shed a little insight on why we're doing what we're doing. That is, moving to Africa. Like Ashley said, it's pretty tough to sum up in a few succinct sentences, but I'll attempt to provide some more detail about what led me to this moment in time. I promise that my explanation will be clearly stated in a convoluted web of superfluousness and irrelevant allegories.

maryknoll? what's that?

As many of you have heard, Michael and I recently left Dallas for our eventual move to Tanzania. You know generally that we're doing nonprofit work. You know it has a Christian/Catholic flavor to it. And you sometimes heard the word, "Maryknoll" when we were discussing our transition and new jobs. But what is Maryknoll? How did it come to be?

enjoying our mini retirement.

It's been two weeks since we left our jobs and moved away from Dallas, so you may be wondering, what's been going on? Well stop freaking out and I'll tell you.

no seriously, why are you doing this?

It has been so much more difficult telling family, friends, and co-workers our news (that we are moving to Africa) than I thought it would be. The majority of people have had overwhelmingly amazing responses to it. Most of my favorite interactions have been from people we barely know. The difficulty lies in the questions and reactions that come after the initial announcement by either Michael or myself, consisting of something along the lines of, "Hey, we're leaving our jobs and moving to Africa."