In anticipation of a reunion

How do you feel when an event is just around the corner that is the culmination of years of planning and dreaming? I am heading into such an event in the next few days... I am filled with excitement, anticipation, and have a few butterflies in my stomach!

You see, it is a reunion of old friends and soon to be new friends that are all linked by a single fact.

We went to the same boarding school for a few years of our lives and can never return to that school as it has been closed for some 9 years now. From almost every continent we gathered during those school years just as we are soon to do again. Every generation has sent at least one representative. What an amazing gathering it will be.

My excitement and anticipation and butterflies all point to this reunion. As a member of the planning committee, I, along with the other members of the planning committee have spent time and effort to put this event together. I wonder, will it live up to my expectations? And to my dreams of reconnection with members of my boarding school family? and to the experiences of a childhood long gone?

Well... In a few days I'll know!

I have been blessed in many ways in my life. One of the most profound of those ways was the experience of growing up on two continents and between two countries and a mix of cultures that shaped who I am today.

Africa and North America are the continents that both beckon to my soul. At boarding school in Africa, filled with such a rich cultural mix from every continent, I learned that where we are "from" has a shaping effect on each of us that colors the way we interpret what our brain perceives from what our eyes can see. It taught me that there is beauty in the global cultural diversity and strength in our unity. When you play side by side with kids of every human skin color and live side by side a melding takes place. Understanding, awareness and appreciation of our differences and of our shared experience becomes a connecting force.

Why am I and my friends making the journey of thousands of miles to sit and chat or embrace each other face to face again after all these years apart? It is because at our roots we are connected by our common experience of having shared life together in some of the most formative stages of our lives.

I am stoked to see what this next week brings... I am going to do my best to let my expectations go and just enjoy the moment by moment.

I am SO looking forward to this wonderful gathering of amazing people that have contributed to my journey to discovering a full life!!