hammocking around

I have been living in Kimberley for a little over two months now and already I know that I have changed. I’m not saying I’m a new person or anything drastic like that, but I have definitely recognized small changes in the way I think, the way I work and even the way I spend my time.

Our hammock. My favorite part of our house.

Some of these changes I have been forced to make. As my dad will attest, back home I was a voracious texter, but over here I send, maybe, five texts a week. There are two reasons for this change; the first is due to airtime. In South Africa, you can’t purchase a phone plan for a cell phone. Instead you have to buy airtime that gets used each time you make a call or send a text (the really cool thing about airtime though, is that you are not charged anything for receiving calls or text messages). You would be amazed at how quickly I use up my airtime. One of the biggest culprits of airtime is sending text messages. It costs about R0,80 to send one text message. So it is actually cheaper and more efficient to just call someone and talk to them instead of texting them. Shocker, right!?!

The other reason for this texting change is that everyone over here is a “people person.” When people run into people that they know in the street they will stop and talk with them for a few minutes, regardless of what they are doing or how late they might be running. When I am driving around and I see someone I know, I’ll hoot the horn and have a brief shouting conversation as I drive by. Even at the office, whenever a coach walks in, before they do anything else, they greet each and every person in the office and quickly ask how they are doing. It’s all about people. And I love it.

But the biggest change that I have noticed in myself, and one that I am very proud of, is that I am completely okay – and even enjoy – doing absolutely nothing. Back home I was always on the go doing a million things at once. Even when I had nothing to do I would watch a movie while simultaneously texting five people and surfing the web. But over here I can’t do any of that. So instead, I’ll just lie in our hammock for hours. Or Trevor and I will sit in our living room with the windows and doors open just listening to music.

Those moments are absolutely amazing. I feel completely relaxed and utterly content. It’s a pretty fantastic feeling and I can’t remember the last time that I was in the States just doing absolutely nothing. But I love it. I love how relaxed I feel during these moments. I love how I am able to appreciate all the little things in life during these moments. And I love how I can get in my own head and just think about things during these moments.