Karen's highs and lows since coming back from Kenya:

I don't know where to start this blog, so I'll just dive in.

Highs
- watching thunderstorms roll in over the lake and feeling like it's almost fallishly cool.
- taking our new Program Coordinators (Clair and Beth) to church with us (and that they liked the service, too)
- eating homemade ice cream with our Bukavu MCC team
- celebrating seven years with Mark with dinner out at the nice lake-side restaurant in town and reminiscing about our previous six anniversaries and especially the first couple months of our marriage when we were settling into Denver in the coldest weather ever! (in my mind)
- feeling good about my term paper for my Restorative Justice class, that I know how to talk about challenges of applying RJ in different cultural contexts
- a really good experience journaling in a new way (cluster journaling) and feeling hopeful that I won't be stuck wrestling with feeling annoyed for the rest of my life!
- sharing a dinner of appetizers with our new French friends at their home and having great conversation from challenges of life in Congo to differences between Catholics and Protestants to Mark's encouraging (American) coaching style. (they said French coaching is only ever critical).
- chatting with our new Beth on the 2 hour drive to a site visit
- had a warm shower at our apartment! (my first in about 6 months)
- we have better internet at the office now!

Lows
- unpredictability of electricity at our house
- not getting to practice French as much in the office since our main common language is now English (and being entirely clueless when conversations are going on in Swahili, which is more common now since Clair and Beth speak Swahili and not French)
- our other new teammate hasn't arrived yet because her visa is blocked in Kinshasa (no surprise)
- rehashing hard stuff we've gone through in order to look for positive changes we could put into practice.
- realising that as a "J" on the Myers-Briggs, living here is inherently more stressful for me and not knowing how to compromise between Mark's "P" and my "J" at home, when I'm already so tired of being flexible, spur-of-the-moment.

I'm looking forward to our Thanksgiving celebration this week and to some upcoming travels, such as to see our friends the DeKornes in Uganda over Christmas! Also looking forward to being one class closer to graduating with my masters.

some videos mark took on recent trips

Elevator speech on peacebuilding (but in a car) + birthdays and stress leave

We were catching a ride from the Sunday Frisbee game toward our lodging in Nairobi, and someone asked about my master's degree in peacebuilding. "Do you actually learn anything concrete?" It's a good question, so I thought I'd share my attempt to respond with you.

I have learned valuable conflict analysis tools. When you can see conflict as a system and try to understand how it works, you can also find points of opportunity, where an intervention could create change. I like the term "leverage point" where a little bit of pressure can go a long way because of being placed in the appropriate location or context. I've learned a lot of process tools and ways of thinking about how things affect each other.

We're about to head to the airport after ten wonderful days of stress leave which followed our birthdays, so let me upload these pics for you before we leave our good, unlimited internet!

swimming on Lake Tanganyika on Marks' birthday

Lunch in the Kigali airport on my birthday

There were amazing trees in bloom all over the parcel where we stayed in Nairobi!

Jacarandas have always been my favorite, and this lovely spot was right out our back door!

We even got to go on a nice hike in the middle of Nairobi!

There were caves and a lovely waterfall

Our time here has been really good for us. Good conversations, new ways of thinking about ourselves and about challenges we're facing. Please pray that we'll implement our new learnings faithfully. It's, of course, mixed feelings to be leaving warm showers, grocery stores with lots of good stuff, and reliable internet, etc. But we're both thankful for a lot of things we're going back to in Congo, and we'll be happy to be back with our wonderful team.

Hail video from a while back

Since we have better internet here in Nairobi, I thought I'd try to load this video.