days < 20 -- preparing

piece of advice for future outbounds #5:

start saying goodbye to everyone you know way before you leave. it goes fast, and you don't know if or when you'll see them again.

everything is starting to become more real. I have my flight date, my departure time (see this updated countdown timer if you'd like to know when that is) and a list of things to do in the next two weeks.

my reaction? "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

---

anyway.

things that have happened in the last 10 days:

• spending possibly my last days on the Pacific beach (and possibly any beach?) for the next year. Switzerland is landlocked, so I will probably miss the ocean.
• also. in case I haven't mentioned it, I now have my itinerary. I will receive my visa and passport back soon, and then I'll basically have everything I need to leave!
• going on one last family vacation before we leave. 
• attempting to finish the Rosetta Stone level 2 in German... so close. Unfortunately, my microphone appears to have gone weird on me. Hopefully it will revive itself enough that I can finish!
• other than that? not much. random philosophical discussions, Rotary meetings, etc., plus business with the last-minute complications of traveling.

that's it for now!

i'm not ready

the most common question i get now:
"are you ready?"

and normally i smile and say yes, sure, absolutely, thrilled, etc.
but i thought about it and i realized that no, i'm not.

it freaks me out to think that i will be getting on a plane and living without my family and friends here for a year. i feel too young and too inexperienced and too whatever to possibly be ready.

but every time i've ever felt scared and worried and stressed about something that i know i want to do, i've felt unready. and somehow by the time i am doing it, i am ready. i'm not sure what happens inside when i become ready... there's only the fact  that when the moment of truth comes, i am. and i trust myself to know when i will be.

so no, i'm not ready.

but you know what?

i will be.

stamps

the post office at the grocery store gets a lot of traffic, even on weekdays. since school isn't out, i am the youngest person here. 

I stand up straighter, push back my bangs. Try to look like I belong here. Hope no one asks me why I'm not in school. 

Short people just naturally get taken for littler than they are. I remember one July picnic when a little boy asked me how old I was (14). I asked him how old I looked. He squinched his eyes up at me, thought hard, and said, "eleven?" my sister nearly died laughing. 

I don't ask people to guess my age anymore. 

The lady at the register looks toward us and I bring my envelopes over, sliding them across the counter like I've done it a million times. "How much will it cost me to send these to Switzerland?" 

She says "2.20" without having to think. post office ladies are cool like that.
I ask how long it'll take and she says a week. I ask if there are any ways to get it there faster.
The lady lifts her eyebrows. "well, there's a couple options. we can send it one way and that costs 33 dollars, or you can take the other option but that's 44.25." 

... 

with as much dignity as I can muster, I say I'll stick with the first option. She takes my money, stamps the envelopes in red, and sticks international stamps on the corners. They're round, with a picture of the earth on them--pretty.
As the lady slides the envelopes away and hands me my change, I think about that stamp. It's so little to be sent halfway around the world. In my head I trace a line across the little blue globe--Switzerland is probably only about two inches away. 

except that in 60 days I'll be following that envelope, and it won't be any two inches neither. 

more than 2000 miles. 

and i realize just how little i am, to be sent halfway around the world.

surreal

"It seemed that all around me was a smooth bubble, clear enough to see through, but strong enough to keep me inside... I imagined pores in this bubble ball that could let in streams of things from the outside, so I could examine them and poke them back out again if I didn't like them..."

--Bloomability, Sharon Creech

i've just come home from the rotary district conference, where everything was new and we were feeling the same things and learning the same things and ready to travel the world. but now, i sit here in my house with everything familiar around me, and i wonder what exactly i think i am doing.

because in less than 80 days now, i will be in switzerland.

i will be in another country with foreign languages spoken all around me.

i will be living with another family.

i will be without the friends i know now and the schedules i have here.

i will be halfway around the world.

for a year.

and yet, as close as it is, i somehow can't seem to make it feel true. i know that it's coming, and i know that i don't have much time left. as ridiculous as it sounds, i feel like i'm going to wake up any minute now. 

it's just that everything feels so distant. i know that there have been hundreds, thousands, of exchange students before me. i know that they have done this before. but somehow their world seems so far away from mine.

so very very far away.