Saturday, January 10, 2009

Adventures of a different sort

I miss this one-sided conversation with whoever you are out there. Not posting underscores a view that "Jo's midlife adventures" are somehow on hold, when in fact I most need to remind myself to seek the adventures in every day, even here, freezing my now reduced butt off in the midst of an Ottawa winter.

The African journey is only on hold. All the questions it's raised, all the inspiration to do more to help, has led me to start adventuring in academia. I'm now officially registered in a Certificate in Applied Ethics program at the Dominican University here in Ottawa. My first two classes felt like no less an adventure than my first day in Longido. For starters, I don't speak the language. Philosophy?? Me?? All those years of formal education, initially so focused on the sciences then economics mostly of the mathematical sort, and suddenly I feel like the only 50-something on the planet who hasn't read Plato...doesn't know one 'ism' from another. But the adventure comes in suddenly finding myself old enough and fearless enough to look a professor in the eye and say "I don't understand this" and ultimately learning something totally new. My brain is excited...looking forward to the challenge of the next few months.