I am anxious and excited and nervous and scared. (What up Hemingway?). I have finally said my goodbyes to most friends and family and I leave in two days. Really I am just waiting for this to all start. I know I will miss everyone and everything about home, but that gnawing 'waiting' feeling needed to be dealt with. I think most people at one point or another have the tentative 'waiting' feeling, waiting for something to happen or take shape. I have been feeling this for the past three years and while I filled my weeks with races and events and friends, I always felt like I was waiting for the big things to happen. I'm hoping this is one of those big things because if not then I've made a huge mistake.

There is an old traditional Irish/Scottish song called The Parting Glass that was typically sung at the end of a gathering of friends. Like new years with Auld Lang Syne I've kind of been drawn to this one as the days and hours seem to be slipping away. It goes as follows:

Of all the money that ere I had, I spent it in good company.
And of all the harm that ere I've done, alas was done to none but me.
And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Of all the comrades that ere I had, they're sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that ere I had , they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not,
I will gently rise and I'll softly call, "Goodnight and joy be with you all!"

Oh, if I had money enough to spend and leisure time to sit awhile
There is a fair maid in this town that sorely has my heart beguiled
Her rosey cheeks and ruby lips, she alone has my heart in thrall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Thank you.

Recently I had my "thank you" party to my team mates and my sponsors for the Philadelphia Triathlon. We raised close to 3000$ to fight cancer and for that I am eternally grateful to them. After the race I wrote a reflection of the race and then used it as part of a thank you speech so without further ado: 

I have been humbled by many things in my life, beauty, athleticism, intelligence, but I rarely am humbled by, and the one you all showed to me,  humbled by kindness and generosity. Please allow me to be vulnerable with you for a moment and share with you something I wrote hours after the race was over and I had time to reflect on everything.

I sat down in the shower, exhausted beyond belief, relieved and sad.  and I thought back on everything that had happened. I saw the race stretched out from end to end. I remembered the anxiety at the beginning, of being the last group and having no friends to see me off. I remembered the hectic-ness of jumping into the water and taking off. My legs even went numb thinking about it as I watched water swirl down the drain. I was scared at that moment. I don't know of what, I wasn't tired, I wasn't hurt, I was just scared. This was it and I couldn't get my rhythm in the water, I couldn't breathe right. I remembered not being able to walk to my bike after the swim, but slowly steadying myself. I remembered feeling like the hills had gotten longer and steeper. I remembered on the second loop I was one of the only people left. I remembered the run which stretched out in the heat, the sun beating down, without any shade. That run was my entire life. And then I looked further back, I remembered the faces of my team mates, and the practices we had together and I was sad that it was all over. and then I remembered back the further yet. I remembered my mother weakened by cancer when I was in middle school. I saw all this laid out before me and with the water falling on my head, I cried. I cried, and the emotions I felt were so conflicting that they only made it worse. I remembered the news that my mom was diagnosed and I remembered how helpless I felt and how helpless I was and then I thought how the money I raised might just save someone else's mom, somewhere, anywhere. And maybe we were a little less helpless now. I felt exhausted and sad that I didn't do as well as I thought, but deep down I felt pride for what I did. I felt pride for me and I felt pride for my family who stood by and waited at the finish to tell me how proud they were. And I cried because I was so happy, I was so happy that I got to have this experience and got to do all this. and I was so happy that my friends believed in me so fervently and so generously that I was able to raise so much money. I wish I could be as generous as them, and as selfless because in my eyes they are saints. 

When I finally got myself together, I finished rinsing off and I fell asleep. I was awoken by my family hours later with pizza and I cried again because I realized how lucky I was and how incredibly life can be. So thank you for helping me get here, thank you for everything.

One month.

Started packing, the leaving part has not sunk in yet. I've been slowly amassing a small mountain of things that I want to keep with me while I am down in Venezuela.

There's medicine, and international documents and teaching books and manipulatives and random accessories and doohickies. I know it looks messy but there is method to the madness. Mostly just figuring out what I need to take with me on the plane, what I can keep in luggage, and what I will be sending after the fact. I am taking many journals and my fiddle. I was told that Ciudad Ojeda can get boring at times so I need to entertain myself. It is a city of around 125,000 but due to the heat the streets are pretty vacant. From what I've heard life in western Venezuela is a lot like life in Philadelphia, in the summer, when weather edges towards heatwave status. It is 95* and humid almost every day.

This is my greatest fear. Heat. Not kidnapping, not their Rodents Of Unusual Sizes, not the banana spiders, or anti american sentiment. I fear the heat and I will miss the winter. Albert Camus once wrote:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. It's a very beautiful and poetic line but I resonate with the opposite. Winter is my season, I like the cold, I like layers, I like snow and the kind of silence that only snowfall brings. To give this up for a year will be torture but there is little growth in comfort. I am hoping that this adventure across the world will live up to my dreamers expectations.

I will most likely bring some TP with me as there has been a recent shortage in the country. You read the right, they have a shortage on toilet paper. More on this later.

I've started spending a few hours a day studying Spanish. I took Spanish classes from 7th grade until my sophomore year of college so I am not going into this completely unprepared but I realized the other day that I kept telling people I was leaving in "Una mesa" which translates to "One table". So I also have my work cut out for me. I have 28 days until I leave and I plan on celebrating and saying goodbyes. Much time and little to do. Wait. Switch that.