M to M to M to M to M

      Going to Cambodia was just too great an experience to be my last adventure abroad.  For the last few months, I've been thinking about another trip.  I thought of going back to Cambodia and certainly hope I can someday.  What I'd really love is to take a college ethics class there, but I don't know how likely that is.
      It seemed to me that I ought to try some other part of the world, and for some reason, Africa sounds very appealing.  One of the only things I didn't like about Cambodia was being incapable of communicating with the locals.  I've been able to pick up SOME language in other trips, but the Khmer and Bunong languages were WAY out of my league.   Well, hey!  In South Africa, almost everybody speaks English, I'm told!
     For months now, I've been going back and forth as to whether I should go to South Africa to do some more volunteer work with animals.  I'd swing back and forth between feeling so very positive about attempting to repeat the life-changing experience that was Cambodia and feeling so very self-indulgent about the expense that would be Africa.
     How to resolve such a conflict?  Well, here's how.  My last night in Cambodia I met a wonderful woman who had given herself 3 weeks at the Elephant Valley Project for a 50th birthday present, and I thought that was an amazing idea.  And now my 60th (gulp) birthday is coming up in January, so I'm going to be giving myself this trip as a 60th birthday present.  Don't know why, exactly, but that makes the decision so much easier for me.  What are birthdays for if not self-indulgence?
      So.  Now I've applied and been accepted by another British organization called the African Conservation Experience, and I've sent them my non-refundable deposit.  So . . .  I'm going.  Mid-February 2013.  Four months from now.
      I bet I'm the first person from McNaughton, Wisconsin, to go to Mondulkiri, Cambodia, back to McNaughton, and then to Moholoholo, South Africa, and, with ANY kind of luck, back to McNaughton!!!