On to the next adventure

The hours are counting down until I leave for my next big adventure. I was going to leave tomorrow, actually, but Dad still has to change the oil in my car, so I'm going to take my time packing and leave on Thursday. But really, I'm ready to go. I've got nothing else on my to-do list that absolutely has to be done before I leave, aside from packing. And that I could easily have done tonight. But I'll let tomorrow see it's share of packing and preparations. I'll at least take the opportunity to play around with the cleats on my clip-in pedals and see if I can't get those to "fit" properly.

Thursday morning I'm gonna leave on my first big solo road trip, as it were. I'll be driving all the way up to the Upper Peninsula, moving into my new apartment, and getting the lay of the land before I start my job on Monday. I'll be biking out my commute route and figuring out how that works. I'll be going to the post office and setting up my P.O. box for the summer. I'll be visiting my grandma's friends and letting them teach me about the area. I'll be locating the local library and getting a library card (if the collection seems good!). I'll be checking out the rundown of local churches, service times, and locations. In general, I'll be doing all the things a good citizen would do as they establish themselves in a new town.

I'm really excited for this job. I hope that it goes as well as my last ghost town job went. I'm looking forward to the time alone I'll have up there for thinking and whatnot. Hopefully things'll clean up and organize as well in my mental upstairs this summer as they have in my physical upstairs over the past couple weeks! I've got so much to ponder up there - so much has happened over the last year - and I really just need to sort it all out and see where I go from here.

Hard at work once more

I'm back home, and in no way am I making a vacation of the 2 weeks + that I have here before going up to the UP for the summer. I have torn into the work in my room with much fervor and have been getting a lot done. Since my brother is moved out, I've decided that I'm going to move into his room. Yes, his room has nicer carpet and yes, his room is painted a wonderful shade of earthy green. But the major point of moving myself into his room is this: it's smaller. That's right. Michael's room is about half the size of mine, and so by moving all my stuff into his old room, I'm forcing myself to downsize. Initially people told me I couldn't do it, but I ignored them, and pressed on. Now my parents are commenting on the effectiveness of this mind-game. The whole: if it doesn't fit or have a place, it doesn't stay. It works better when I'm moving things from one place to another and I don't have the option of just throwing everything back in the box and putting it back in the closet for another day.

This morning alone I turned three boxes of stuff into two. Since I started really working on Monday, I've filled two large boxes of things to get rid of, doubled the load in my recycle box, and am about to fill a garbage bag with items to trash. I'm being ruthless - or at least as ruthless as I can be. It's the small, going through boxes full of crap, that wears on me the most, but I'm trying to press through it, and I'm giving myself plenty of breaks. For instance, during a break today I messaged the local Christian radio station and got a request played on the radio I was listening to! Very exciting. That reenergized my efforts for another half hour or so.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in and ensure everyone that I am, indeed, safely back in the U.S. of A. and surviving my transition shap-shap. I miss Botswana, but there's a lot to be done here, and I'm glad that I'm back and achieving it. The end of my Great Purge, which started my senior year of high school, is coming into sight, and I am quite thrilled.

packed.

I found that I had nothing else to really do today, and not wanting to add any stress to tomorrow, I started packing. And I finished, almost completely. Oops.

Presents are pressed tightly into my large suitcase, wrapped in t-shirts and cushioned by underwear, hankies, skirts, and sweaters. I think it might be overweight just a touch. But that's why there's still so much room in my other checked bag, into which I dumped everything else: books, notebooks, leftover clothes, less breakable presents, shoes, and clothespins, among other things. It's pretty much the catch-all.

I just spent the last hour walking around, running into people and saying goodbye. I can't believe I'm actually going to be leaving tomorrow. It seems so strange that the day after tomorrow I won't be waking up on this same bed, in this same room, to do the same old thing. The day after tomorrow is a Wednesday: I would be taking a slow morning, going outside to do some hand-washing, coming inside to do whatever homework I had left before classes started for the day at 12.

Saying goodbye is strange. It doesn't seem real. You give someone a hug, and you wonder, Am I really not going to see this person again? Is this really it? So you hold tight, and you squeeze, but you can't shake that surrealist doubt in your mind as to the reality of the moment. You feel like you should say or do something more, but you don't know what. Because when you're leaving, what more is there to say beyond "goodbye" and "it was nice to know you"?

Tomorrow I'm leaving on a jet plane. By Wednesday afternoon I'll be in Chicago. By Friday night I'll be home. Saturday I'm eating real, flavor-filled food with my family. Sunday my parents are having an "open house" for people to come see me home. But I think that part of me will always be here.

We meet to part, and part to meet. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. There's numerous song lines that could speak to my situation right now. But I'm falling back on the classic love of mine, Del Barber:

"Chicago calls, and I can't let her down."

5 more days!

This morning I did probably my second-to-last load of hand-washing. Glorious. When I take in the (hopefully) sun-dried clothes tonight, I'm going to go through them and pick out which I'm going to wear for my last four days. Technically I'll only be picking three, since on Tuesday I'm going to be wearing my traveling clothes and I've already got those all picked out.

It really dawned on me today how little time I have left, and how close and how real my homecoming is. I'm getting so excited to see everyone again! And I'm starting to say goodbye to all my friends here. It's hard, but knowing that I've got so much to look forward to back home is helpful.

My next little adventure is in the Upper Peninsula, and then I'll be finishing out my last semester of college. And what happens after that? Well, everything is still up in the air, but I have decided to go with the urging of my advisor and other professors and apply for a Fullbright ETA. I've been debating this for some time, and I've realized that I don't want to do it necessarily for the reasons that my professors want me to - but I would like to go on another adventure, and the description sounds interesting. That is, the description of the said position in Turkey - that's right, who knows where I'll go next!? I just can't be stopped! :) So, soon-ish I'm going to have to start working on the application for that, and other preparations, like taking Turkish lessons. Which means that I'd be working on language number 4! Outrageous!

Well, that little teaser aside, I think I'm going to call it a day in the blogger world. I've got preparations to do for my exams tomorrow: History in the morning, Ecology in the evening. Then tomorrow night Chimo will be plaiting my hair. Saturday morning I get to learn how to make phaphata!!!! Sunday will be my last time attending Setswana mass, Monday will be my last day to do laundry, and Tuesday I'm going to leave! Eish!!!

Beginning of the end...

My exams start this week. Tomorrow, to be exact. I've got Setswana, then Afro-Caribbean Lit, and History and Ecology on Friday. Then Friday night it'll all be over with, and I'll be relaxing in a chair while Chimo plaits my hair.

I'm busy with exam preparations for History: a show of how we didn't ever really learn anything in that class: I have to do research to have any idea on how to answer the questions in the exam. How bizarre. I'm going to be glad to be done with that one, for sure.

This morning we went to Choppies and I bought some dry goods to take the taste of Bots home with me. 1 kg of instant sorghum porridge (I would have gotten sorghum meal and cooked it myself, but the smallest they had was 2.5 kg, and I thought that was a little much!). 2 kg of dried samp and beans - one of which will be opened during my little spree in Chicago so that my friends can enjoy some samp and beans in the midst of exams. :)

My future roommate signed the lease on our apartment for the summer up in Garden, MI. It'll be a cute little place, and I don't think it'll be that bad. Apparently we're right across the street from the beach! She's going to send me pictures soon, so that'll be nice. I'm kind of excited to have my first real apartment. It's like I'm growing up! I'm looking forward to this summer: I think it'll be a good growing experience for me, and I'm sure that being up there in all the trees and lakeshore and whatnot that I love, it'll give me a lot of time to think and be at peace about transitioning back to the U.S. and preparing myself for my final semester of college.

My life is careening towards the end of the current chapter, everything picking up speed as it goes. Pretty soon I'm sure I'll reach maximum velocity. End of study abroad. End of summer. End of semester. End of school. Wow. I wonder what the next chapter will bring and where it will take me?