Time is teetering on 10pm, I'm sitting at my computer listening to Ray Lamontagne as a buffer against the noise of four of my male colleagues making a door, literally, for another colleague that lives next door to me. Filing and sawing and banging and crashing. 10pm seems like a reasonable hour to be making a door. Upon finding them all there, in a pow-wow around the slab of wood that was to become a door I naturally left and returned with cookies that I had baked earlier that afternoon. It was a perfect excuse to pawn some of them off and gain some brownie points with the guys. (I was thrilled that, after trying their first, they all snatched two more each from me as I was leaving...I may be an embarrassment of a cook back home, but here in Okahao, with my propane stove, I am a culinary goddess).

Tomorrow, I am leaving Okahao right after school and hiking to Ondangwa, where I will be over-nighting with a fellow volunteer and getting up early to catch a combie (oversized van that they cram chalk-full of people to transport around the country) to Tsumeb where I'll be meeting up with my dad!! Papa bear is in Namibia! It seems like forever ago that I was blogging about the fact that my dad had decided to come and visit in far-away-May..and now the far-away is here. I can honestly hardly contain my excitement. I'm a little bit nervous too actually. Over the past four months I've been in relatively consistent contact with my family back home, but still have a hard time conceiving of the fact that they continue to exist in day-to-day life back home and aren't just an abstraction in my mind that will resume upon my return. I have no idea how I'll feel when I see him...excited and thrilled, sure, but no doubt overwhelmed at the same time.

On Sunday we are going to make the trek back up north to Okahao, where dad will spend the last three days of the school term with me before we make our way baaaaack southward to Windhoek and then to Cape Town where we will start our adventure (although, with all the travelling that we will be doing prior to that we are bound to encompassed by 'adventure'). From Cape Town we're going to embark upon a guided tour from South Africa up through Namibia, finishing in Windhoek on May 14th, from which father Lahn departs back to reality as you know it. I don't want to blog too much about our travel plans because I want to be able to describe our jaunts in future blogs. I don't know if internet access will be a possibility during our voyage together, so it might be mid-May before I blog again. I hope that this blog finds you happy, healthy and well. I miss and love you all.

Cheers,

Jen.