but i am home

so classes end exactly two weeks from friday... i'm not exactly sure how i feel about this. part of me is SO eager to get out of this town, be around different people, experience NOT being a student for a little while. at the same time, the truth is that i love this town, these people, and having no responsibility other than to read and write and learn and have crazy amazing experiences...

honestly, though, i am so excited for this summer and of course for capetown in the fall. i will be spending 12 weeks on mackinac, on lake michigan, with my best friend in the entire world, maggie wickett. mag goes to notre dame and has lived in another state since we were fourteen, and we've always talked about spending a summer together. and really, this is probably our last chance to do so before we have to start behaving like adults... not that i plan on following through with that one. anyway, maggie and i will be living on mackinac dorm-style with all the other college students who work up there over the summer, and hostessing in the dining room of a huge, beautiful hotel right on the water. should be fantastic.

i will also be taking a long weekend off work in mackinac to head up to georgian bay to stay with my mother's entire side of the family. we rent out a huge lake house in the summer to bring everyone together now that so many of us have moved away from the toronto area (jane, my aunt, usually wins the award for distance-- she's living in london right now, following a two-year stint in afghanistan, and east timur before that). a 12-bedroom lake house, a beautiful quiet lake, plenty of good food and canadian beer, and all 28 members of the mcelhone branch of the family. that's my 92-year-old grandfather/resident badass (he destroyed his ballot in the canadian national elections in january... 92 and still politically active), the six mcelhone kids, five more married-in aunts and uncles, twelve cousins (including me, my brother and my sister), the spouses of three of those cousins, and my cousin kristin's little girl, elizabeth. definitely the fun side of the family, and my cousin nick and i have always been partners in crime.

then on august 29th, it's off to south africa for the fall semester! i will be living in a house in capetown with 16 other unc kids, taking just two classes, and spending the rest of my time writing and researching and interning with molo songololo, a non-profit children's rights advocacy group. molo's purpose is to provide representation to children in different areas of legislation. as i understand it, my job will be to spend time in a few of the townships, helping to design and run workshops, getting to know the kids involved, and communicating with molo to ensure that these children have a voice in the policies that affect their lives. it goes without saying that i am absolutely THRILLED about all of this.

while living in capetown, i will have some opportunity to travel outside the capetown area, including one 10-day trip, probably to a few rural areas and some spots on the eastern cape. when the program ends on december 8th, i will be staying another two weeks to travel, tentatively to namibia and botswana. i would love to make the trip up to zimbabwe, a country very close to my heart as the home of the students supported by an organization i work with on campus, s4si. i have been informed, however, that if i were to travel to zimbabwe and something were to go wrong, i would be completely on my own, without the help of the university or the american government for that matter. i don't know exactly how true this is... but considering the fact that i am in the middle of acquiring dual citizenship (i grew up in ontario), for once i will follow the rules.