Goodbye Grahamstown

Last weekend Max and Xenia (the new volunteers from Germany) arrived in Grahamstown. Since then we have been busy showing them everything they need to know or might want to know. All that time I was trying to recall how I felt seeing all those things for the first time. It feels so distant already, but so does Germany. And it is, just not time-wise anymore. In less than one week Chiara and I are going to be back in Germany.

All my German friends I have been in contact with lately told me to enjoy my last days here in South Africa, but that is not as easy as it sounds. It constantly pops into my mind, that this might be the last time I do whatever I am doing at the moment. I am really trying to pay attention to the little details in my everyday life, as those were what I missed the most during my stay here. It is just as weird to do things like preparing documents to enroll at university or even just plan ahead for the next week. It still seems like all of that is distant future.

We also had to start saying goodbye to our learners, which is awful. We probably won’t get the chance to meet them again. On the other hand, it was really good to see how they already get along great with Max and Xenia.

I am not really afraid of how much I will miss South Africa, or not coping well with coming back. When I arrived here I was rather surprised that it wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected it to be. Even if it turns out to be much harder now, missing something just shows what a great experience it was, which is a good thing after all. I am much more afraid of forgetting things. When I came here I was completely occupied with adapting to everything that was new, and didn’t think about Germany all that much for the first few month. Which was fine, because now I am going back. But my mind will be just as occupied with adapting to university and a new city in Germany. And I don’t know how soon I will be able to return to South Africa, and who knows how Grahamstown will look then.

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