Getting closer!

A week and a half!

A week and a half until takeoff, a statement which simultaneously sounds amazing and horrifying. A week and a half! Regardless of how I feel about that statement, that week and a half will pass, and soon I will be in Managua, Nicaragua with four other girls who are probably as unprepared as I am.

Which reminds me! Yesterday I had my online orientation for the Managua program, and I learned that five girls, including myself, will be in the program. It's like my FIG all over again! (When I started college, I joined a Freshman Interest Group which was made up of something like 14 girls and 1 guy, and many of us girls from that group have remained close throughout college). Managua looks amazing, and the local staff seem like good people.

Soon I'll start the ridiculous task of packing a six month supply of everything I need into a single duffel bag and hiking pack, and then I will be on my way.
 Hasta luego.

One Month Til Departure

Exactly one month from today --on February 8th, 2011-- I will embark on my six month direct exchange at la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua, in Managua. As of now, I know nothing about my future host family, the other students in the program, or the courses I will take at UNAN. My Spanish is fairly rusty, having been put on the back burner since the end of my Freshman year of college. I am currently a Junior.  

...I may be extremely unprepared for all of this.

Knowing so little about what lies ahead is both terribly exciting and, quite frankly, slightly terrifying. I recently began a writing in a journal that I plan to keep during my time abroad, and as I began writing in it for the first time, I sat back and and reveled in the fact that right then, on the first page of that blank book, I had no way of even imagining the people, places and events that will fill the rest of its currently quiet pages.

Before I can find out what lies ahead, I will be soaking up all the grey skies, coffee shops, great friends, rain drops and secure comforts that I have spent the first twenty years of my life surrounded by in the Pacific Northwest. I will miss Seattle, but I am ready for a few new places, though currently unknown. 

Impatiently yours,

RM

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." -Martin Buber