Prologue

So many goodbyes. It was a numbing week. It's true that most of these goodbyes are people I wouldn't see anyway, even if I had been living and working in LA. The goodbyes drown me in memory. They remind me of all the things I've done, and the so many mistakes I've made. If I could say just one thing to the sea of faces that have compromised my life up to this point, I'd say...


Big gulps huh? Welp, see ya later!

I'm sitting in a nice hotel in Philly (beautiful city, pity I can't see more of her) pretending to listen as my roommate brags about memorizing everyone's name already. I am thinking to myself: whose bright idea was this anyway? What is Mozambique going to do to my bowels? Are hippos really that fast?


The answer to all these questions is yes. And it's with that realization that I go boldly forth to the next great adventure. It is a funny idea, to absolutely know you are on the cusp of something momentous and challenging and not being able to do anything other than wait. So like any good college student...er...like any good starving recent grad, I went out with a few of the other volunteers for beers. I had a beef burger with blue cheese, caramelized onions, and bacon. I crammed my face with french fries and microbrewed IPA and thought as little as possible. So far so good.


Tomorrow I get on a bus to JFK then a plane to Johannesburg and another to Maputo, for the longest trip of my life. But they gave me an allowance, paid for by American tax dollars, and I am going to blow it all on lottery tickets and japanese candy. And that's all right for now.


They gave us as much information as they could today, and still I fell that I know almost nothing. Tomorrow will be a different story.


The Peace Corps will be monitoring my blog, as will my grandparents, so I am going to have to keep it clean unfortunately. But rest assured, if you send me a message and want to know what the bathrooms are really like, you know I'll be only too happy to oblige.