Lovely English Lass once told me that life when you work overseas moves quickly, and when you're stationed in DC it seems to drag on forever. This is so true, you know? I can't believe that it has been almost 3 years since we arrived in Johannesburg, and yet there are 7 work days between me and my PCS to go to Buenos Aires.
There is so much still left to do. We need to pack what we're taking with us to the States, which involves packing summer clothes. But when we arrive in Buenos Aires, it'll still be winter, so we'll need to pack them too, since it'll take so long for our stuff to arrive. We're limited in how much we're allowed to take baggage-wise, so that's going to be a pain as well. So we're just going to have to find a way to get all this together.
Plus we've got one week before the packers come to move us out. They descend on us like locusts, packing everything into boxes and ensuring that we'll probably not find anything until probably 2 years into our 3 year tour in Argentina. They've scheduled us for two days. That means goodbye nice big bed, and comfy chair and bean bag, and TV and DVDs and everything else. It also means probably eating out for the last 4 days of being in the house, since we won't want to buy anything that can spoil.
We're also still not exactly sure when we'll arrive in Buenos Aires. A lot of that depends on me. I've still got to get the requisite score for Spanish before they'll let me go. Then I'm Congressionally mandated to take 4 work weeks of home leave to ensure I remember what country I work for while overseas. (Seriously, that's the truth.)
There is a lot about South Africa that I will miss. Nice restaurants that have play areas for kids with people that actually watch them; Game reserves with animals that I never thought I'd see in person in the wild; Cape Town of course; surprisingly Durban as well; the loveliness of Clarins in the Drakensburg Mountains; and of course the people and our friends that we've made here.
I won't miss the constant state of alert you have to be on when you live here though. I also won't miss the taxis and the way they drive, or the random rudeness of certain people.
When it comes to the end of a tour in the Foreign Service, there is a tendency to look back and see what you've done, to wax philosophical if you will. I'm very proud of the work I've done here in South Africa. My kids are thriving now, and are ready for a new school. My lovely wife is probably much happier now that she's no longer the Community Liaison Officer, and is looking forward to the new adventure. Me? I'm just happy that I've got a loving family, great friends, and new excitement on the horizon. South Africa will always have a place in our hearts (and on our walls due to the amazing amount of art we've gotten here), and a place we'll always remember fondly.
In the words of a song from when I was in College, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Here's to a new beginning.
