Shoot for the Moon. Earth's Gravitational Pull Will Prevent You From Obtaining Orbit But Maybe You'll Land Somewhere Interesting.

After a fabulous weekend in Nanaimo during which we visited Gabriola for the Theatre Festival, played a total of 11 games of rummy (so, roughly 100 hands), drank a few bottles of wine, drank a few gallons of tea, and discovered I had injured myself, the rest of Summer has flown by.
Did you know it's September 1st today?

I know!

I realised that out of all my plans for the summer, very few of them actually happened but I'm okay with that.

Camping plans fell through at the last minute. Hiking plans never happened due to something else happening pretty much every weekend. Travel to Vancouver and Seattle never materialised for the same reason. I did a lot of running but conflicting schedules and then injury stopped my goal of four-times-a-week.

I did get to catch up with some old friends at Shawnigan. I sat in the gardens at Government House and read a good book. I had multiple BBQs with awesome people. I verbally committed to going to Guinea in December 2012 and teaching the Kubian village ladies to sew school uniforms.

Wait, what?

Yeah, you read that right. But don't worry, go back and reread it just to make sure. I'll wait.

Through the magic of links, I'll remind you of the time I said:

5) MoonDance is talking about going back to Guinea for another dance/drum intensive learning holiday in 2012. Actually, Lynn suggested it a few years ago and then later said it wasn't a firm plan. Tonight Erin and I decided that we're just going to talk about it like it's happening because then it will. So, I'm totally going to Guinea in 2012. You heard it here first.

Erin and I were (sort of) joking but it worked. Moondance is going to Guinea in 2012 for dance and drum lessons. (While I have verbally committed to doing this, I will refrain from saying I'm actually going until I can sit down and do some accounting math and planning.)

Moondance is very closely related to Matoto as Matoto was born out of Moondance's last trip to Guinea. At at working bee last week, we were discussing our school in Kubian which will begin teaching students this October! (very excited about that) when the topic of school uniforms came up. I remembered a project in Tanzania where the local women were taught to sew the uniforms which in turn gave the additional income to the mostly single women.

Why can't we do that?

Except we need someone who sews.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up verbally committing to going to Guinea.

(Actually, I told them that if I am able to make the trip to Guinea, I would teach sewing but that the *if* is quite substantial at this time. They gave me a 'uh-huh' look which clearly states they expect me to fully make it happen. I do, after all , have 15 months to get it sorted.)

Something else I need to get sorted out in that time? French.

Guinea's only offical language is French. While I know that many of our teachers will have some English and many of my fellow travellers will have some French, I'd like to be able to do most of the teaching with as little translation as possible. In other words, I should have started learning French yesterday.

I'm nothing if not ambitious... and slightly crazy.

Mostly crazy.