I spent about a week and a half with my family in South Carolina before heading down to Atlanta for a weekend. I only took one picture the whole time I was in Atlanta. Shame, shame! Well at least it was a good one of me and my friend, L. We have been friends since my first year of teaching. I might not have made it past my first year of teaching without her encouraging presence.
The rest of the weekend was filled with time with good friends in Atlanta - tubing (where I earned a wickedly weird sunburn), a barbecue, visiting my home church, hanging out with precious people for a very short amount of time. From there I hit Toccoa to spend a night with my favorite Nigerien Neighbours, a precious gift indeed to spend a night with them and then it was on to see some good friends in Franklin, NC.
After a night or two back in South Carolina I headed up to Toronto to be with some good friends of mine. We spent several days at a cottage together. I enjoyed sitting out on the dock by the lake.
Here we all are after enjoying a breakfast by the lake! These women have been amazing friends for over 20 years.
Before leaving Toronto, I spent an afternoon with M & C exploring downtown Toronto. There was a lot going on as Toronto was playing host to the Pan-American games.
Here we are in Nathan Phillip's Square.
They had several music stages and some funky musical acts like this one that was tooling around on a very interesting contraption.
I thoroughly enjoyed walking one of my favorite cities with my friends.
After a week in Toronto, I headed back to South Carolina for more time with the family. Here we are enjoying downtown Rock Hill.
My last week included a little meet in the middle road trip with K which turned out to be a little more of an adventure than either of us would have hoped for. K's car ended up breaking down so while we waited for a tow truck till the wee hours of the morning we took pictures together, laughed and enjoyed our unplanned adventure and the gift of more time together.
All too soon, these summer meanderings were over and I had to head home to Niger. I'm not going to lie, saying goodbye was hard but I'm thankful for God's comfort even through that and just for the sweet gift of being together with family and friends.
