"I saw the sign...

... and it opened up my eyes. I saw the sign."

Gotta love 90s music that inspires.

Before I left for this journey, I was encouraged to see those things in life that keep popping up in my life. Just for fun, I started making a list of those things today, and it helped bring life into clearer focus.  Some of these things, like teaching, counselling and working with marginalized youth, I get to do every day here in Namibia, and that is awesome.  Other things, like pushing the US government to decrease barriers to education and support alternatives to traditional educational settings for marginalized youth, will have to wait. 

While I'm working at the Vision School, I do have a major opportunity to be a part of something way bigger than myself.  Since this school will hopefully become the model for other schools all around the country, and this is the pilot school, we get to do something no one else gets to do: whatever we want to help these kids.  We get to pick and choose parts of the Namibian, Cambridge and American models of schooling to create a whole new system, with our own individual flavour added.  That is so cool.  That is what I want to be a part of at this point in my life.  Working with other dedicated teachers and principals and advisors to make a brand new school.  We may not go with my ideas every time, but I am so lucky that I get to have a voice in the future of this school.  Change is difficult, frustrating and exhausting, but it is amazing when you can see the results of the change improving children's outcomes and lives.  This is such an amazing opportunity, one that will hopefully now extend to two full years here.