transplanting.

Sitting here listening to the comforting drizzle of rain against my bedroom window, somehow the night has slipped away. I realize I still have to go to work in the morning, though it seems almost superfluous now - something to pass the time as I wait to start the real business of living. One more week of it, then I’ll be unemployed until training officially starts, 3 weeks later. But hearing the cars on wet pavement outside, and the train whistle echoing in the distance, it seems easy to forget that these sounds are ones I may not be hearing very often in the near future. The rain, especially, is a sound I know I’ll miss. Living in the Pacific Northwest for the last four months has shown me that I love rain more than I ever thought I did.

It’s going to be a shock to my system to go from Portland in winter to Dakar in the dry season, but then again, I expect many things I’ll soon experience will be a shock. I can’t wait. I feel like this is the first thing I’ve been so excited about in a very long time. I know I wasn’t ready to take on this kind of challenge when I first graduated from college, but now I am.

I’m ready for this. I realize it will be hard. I want it to be hard. I want to be challenged, and stretched, and pulled to near breaking. I want to make a difference, to do some good. I also want to have fun, and learn an incredible amount. And for the days when the distance seems to stretch every inch of that ocean, plus the length of a continent, I hope this will serve as a shortcut to bypass a few of those miles - a portkey, if you will :) So here’s to sharing the amazing stories I hope to have to tell, and to helping further the third goal of the Peace Corps.

According to the Peace Corps website,

“In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.

The Peace Corps' mission has three simple goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”


More to come soon, I’m sure, as I spend the next month preparing to leave the country for 27.