Two days until I leave my home, city, state, bedroom, nice comfortable bed, and dog. Four days until I say good-bye to my family, until I leave for Philadelphia for staging, until I meet about 55 other Peace Corps trainees, and until my life changes forever. On Easter Sunday morning after we go to church my family and I will head to Minneapolis for two days to spend time with my brother, his girlfriend, and my nephew. Then on Tuesday morning I fly out of Minneapolis at 6:45am to Philadelphia. I have orientation (Peace Corps calls it staging) from 12pm-7pm. I then will have a hotel room from 7pm-midnight. At midnight we will check out of our hotel and a bus will pick us up to take us to the airport in New York City. We will be about 4-5 hours early for our flight to Guatemala which doesn't leave until 7:15am, but I guess it is better to be early than late.
I have had a quite a lot of emotions lately. Anywhere from being excited to nervous to scared to relaxed to stressed. But I am mostly just excited to get to Guatemala to start learning about what I will be doing for the next 2 years, to learn about the Guatemalan culture, and to meet new people. I am not quite sure why but I feel like leaving home this time is a lot harder than I think it should be. I left home when I was just 16 years old to live one year in Brazil as a Rotary Youth Exchange student. I came home for a year, graduated high school, and then went to Mexico for another year of Rotary Youth Exchange. And in college I studied abroad in Spain for a semester. I think I have become comfortable living at home for the last two years, which I guess is not a bad thing, just makes leaving a little bit harder, but it is time to move on.
When I was an exchange student in Merida, Mexico I went on a mission trip with my school over Holy Week. (I had to go to a Catholic school even though I was not Catholic) We went into a small Mayan village and taught the kids about Holy Week and about Easter. The people were so nice and welcomed us into their homes, taught us how to make tortillas, and shared their lives with us. Even though I was sleeping on the floor of a school with lots of mosquitoes and experiencing my first bucket baths I had a wonderful week. At the end of the week I told myself that some day I will come back and help these people. When I was thinking that I did not necessarily mean go back to that village but I wanted to go somewhere in the area. I hadn't thought about this experience when I was applying for the Peace Corps. It wasn't until after I knew I was going to Guatemala that I remembered that 7 years ago I had told myself I would go back to live in that area and help the people there. Even though it is not the same country, they border each other and I think of it as relatively close to the same area. When I think of that story it makes it easier for me to go.
I might write one more post before I go. Otherwise, you will hear from me when I am in Guatemala!!
