Starting out

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes". (Proust)

I'm (very) nearly 50 years old and having lived in Ayrshire all my adult life, am going to live in Rwanda in August. I'm hoping to have a double voyage of discovery - both new landscapre and new eyes.

The "new eyes" have started to grow already, as I have started to think about what it will mean to live, to work, to worship in a very different culture. Part of me wants to try to understand what it will be like; to understand some of the dynamics; to prepare as thoroughly as is possible. Another part wants everything to be fresh and new when we get there. Reality will be somewhere in between, no doubt.

This seems as good time as any to start out on this blog- this week we put our house on the market, we looked at 2 flats we might buy and we "officially" told the church we are leaving. Since last December, it has felt as if we were coming to the top of a "big dipper" - we are now definitely over the top and picking up speed at a sometimes alarming rate. Very appropriate imagery during the winter Olympics! Actually, it is still more exciting than alarming : I'm sure there will be some scary moments on the way, but all this change is energising and invigorating at the moment.