Leaving Tomorrow!

My time in Kentucky has come to an end. Early tomorrow morning I will be heading to the airport to take off on this crazy adventure. Everything still seems kind of surreal, like it's not really happening, like it can't be me that's going to be spending a semester in Uganda beginning tomorrow. I'm sure it will set in about the time on Friday night when we set foot in the Entebbe airport. "Oh wow. I'm really here. What was I thinking last summer when I applied?" Sometimes it's good to be a bit impulsive and not give yourself time to talk yourself out of things.

I am a bit sad tonight. I have said goodbye to one of my best friends, to my brother, and to his puppy so far. The hardest goodbyes will be my parents tomorrow morning, but I might be half asleep for those...so I'll probably be more upset about that later on when I'm fully awake. It's been a good break with my family, but this has been hanging over our heads for most of my 3 and a half week Christmas break. This will be the biggest goodbye we've said so far, my longest time in one stretch away from home. It will be good for me, though, because I really want to do full time missions someday and that will entail being abroad for years at a time. So here goes. I'm taking my leap of faith tomorrow, jumping head first into a completely new environment--I have never met anyone I will be travelling with, I have never been to Africa, and I have never been away from home for more than 8-9 weeks.

Today has been a crazy day of running around trying to tie off all of the lose ends. I got up, did some cleaning and laundry, played/yelled at my dogs for a while...then went out to chiropractor and bank...came home for like twenty minutes to check on the dogs, went back out to lunch with my dad, went to the pharmacy to get some meds for the trip, went to walmart to get some photos, came home and started to finish up my packing...went out with my mom to get ice cream and coke...and now my dad is fixing me my favorite dinner: chicken wings with mashed potatoes and peas on the side.

And tonight I will at last finish up my Poisonwood Bible assignment, hopefully clean my room, and maybe go to bed at a semi-decent hour. It'll be rise and shine at around 4am tomorrow morning!

Over the past several weeks I have gone through a roller coaster of emotions, from initial excitment to anxiety about all of the "what ifs" to sadness about leaving my family to boredome for lack of friends in my hometown...and finally, God seems to have given me a peace about everything and a calm acceptance of the journey I am about to go on. I'm in that sort of numb phase, not so anxious, but not overly excited...just ready to get everything started. So here we go!