5:44 AM. Saturday morning. Its still dark, but I'm awake. In 12 hours I'll be leaving SA airspace. The project ended yesterday.

I grab the last orange Fanta out of the fridge and sit down to blog.

Kind of fell off the blogging horse for the last week or so - its been a bit crazy wrapping up the project, saying goodbye to everyone, packing up, juggling the possibility of 3 more months of extension work here (found out last night that its postponed til July, at best), and trying to settle on where I'm living when I get back. On the last one, it looks like NYC, with Dave, for the next year. After that I'm leaning towards re-igniting my seminary search, to start the following year. And I'm leaning towards the idea of a school near the coast, back in CA. Surf, baby.

The last few months kind of reignited the surfing bug, after many years dormant - specifically Mauritius and Cape Town, where I surfed last weekend, whilst staying with Mike and Kayln, and Gawie, who's living with them. They have a sweet ocean-view place on the atlantic side of the Cape - south of CT and only about 10 minutes north of the actual Cape itself. It is, authoritatively, one of the most beautiful spots on the planet. And there's incredible surf there.

So the plan from here is to finish packing, do some last minute shopping / errands, fly back to SF via DC, crash at Peters, and then get up to Sacto one way or another. Thursday I'll fly back to the city and stay at Dave's parents' place while we try to nail down an apartment. Mid May I'll head back to Cali and drive down the Baja coast of Mexico with Jonny and whichever of the other brothers have their affairs in order to join us, for mas surfing. These are my plans. I have no specific work projects lined up. I'd like to find a commuting gig in Europe, I think.

I'll miss the organic yogurt from Woolworths, the good cheap wine, the Zulu/Xhosa-influenced hip hop on the radio, the beautiful blonds, the great pizza, the game parks, the warm Indian Ocean, the early rising / early setting lifestyle, the almost-always perfect weather, the best client I've ever worked with (hands down), the flat-out sexy accents, orange Fanta, rugby on the telly, the favorable exchange rate, incredibly friendly people, and driving a BMW. I'm sure there will be lots of other things that I realize over the next couple of weeks that I will miss, but that's all I can think of at 6 in the morning.

Coming to Africa has been pretty much the coolest part of my life.

(More follow-up blogging on Uganda to follow in the next few days, as I get chances to do so.)