the world's on fire, it's more than i can handle...
It's been seven months to this day. And it will be 2 full days after this.
October 13th, I was downtown with Isha. Although we went to Philly at seperate schools, we rarely meet up so we were doing a bit of shopping, a lot of eating and even more laughing. I had just finished telling her about how I applied for Project Mapendo when Katie Leary called me to tell me I made the trip. I shrieked and the rest of the night was a blur of phone calls, text messages, excitedness with Shwa and telling really everyone who helped me (the worker at the chocolate shop who sold me my celebratory chocolate covered pretzel? You betcha he knew).
7 months ago and now the trip is on Wednesday. In those seven months, I just got more and more excited. I really don't think there was one moment that I thought to myself "Gee, I'm really not looking forward to this and I don't think I want to go." In the backburner was this trip constantly. There were birthday presents and Christmas presents that had some aspect of Swahili or Africa dealing with them. I'd pratically skip to meetings and just come back giggling with joy.
The moment that cemented this experience was about a month into the group, I was in Benilde talking with one of the guys who went last year. He voiced his congratulations about going on the trip and told me that it was one of those things that just...changes your life. He said that there are experiences you have and your life beforehand is very different than your life afterwards and this was probably one of his top experiences.
I've got alot of expectations for the trip. I know, from Appalachia, that I shouldn't go into things thinking so highly about them and let them just happen to me but when you've been working for something for seven months or attending seven months of meetings, you can't help but have those high expectations. And I have high expectations for myself. I'm excited and nervous a little and anxious and calm and procrastinating packing and in some ways, I really still can't believe that I will be leaving for Tanzania on Wednesday.
210+ days and I'm down to 2.