hasta luego!

tomorrow is the big day, the day when we spend all day traveling from cleveland to duran!

we fly from cleveland to nyc to miami to guayaquil.  apparently there’s one flight from miami to guayaquil daily, everyday in the evening sometime (I’m guessing around 5).  we’re supposed to get into ecuador around 9, and I’m told it’s a four hour flight.  cake.

tonight there’s a crazy social in the lounge with doritos and twizlers and m&ms and cheetos and potato chips and american beer.  all the junk foods people will miss…I think the point is to make yourself so sick that you couldn’t face doritos for a year?  I dunno. 

anyway, when next I post I will be in south america, never carrying anything valuable and trying not to look like I have any money, which should not be hard considering that I won’t actually have any.  seriously, rob me and be very disappointed.

hanging in ohio…still

soooo yeah.  I’m still at orientation.  but only four more days in the US!  freak out! 

we just had two days of silent retreat at a retreat house in PA.  it was nice, but the grounds were kind of small so I kept running into people.  it was no Gethsemani, where I wandered in the woods for hours and never saw another person (and then worried about tripping and hurting myself and never being found again…) but it was nice and there was a porch with rocking chairs so had a peaceful nice time.  gave me time to transition and put my mind in order and such.  they required us to go to spiritual direction and three talks though, which annoyed me.  I perfer spiritual direction to be optional, and I don’t like doing it with some random person I’m never going to see again.  the first time you go to a spiritual director is usually just getting to know you stuff anyway.  you never get into the good stuff until you’ve established a relationship. 

the rest of this week is practial workshops on counseling and teaching and social work stuff.  should be…not so fun.  I’m ready to get started already.  I hear our house in Ecuador has a porch, btws.

serious eek

Friday my family, paul, and I leave for Cleveland.  I turn off my cellphone.  I return my laptop to my employer.  I stay in on a college campus with little to no internet access for two weeks.  I am basically incommunicado.  after that day, it is quite possible you will not hear from me until I am in freaking SOUTH AMERICA.  how completely crazy is that?  (ok I will have a phone card to call people during orientation but I won’t be able to call everyone as it’s public phones so really don’t feel bad if I don’t call you).

really, this is a pretty difficult week.  I mean, I’m excited and pumped and ready to go in many ways.  but I’m also fully aware that this means that I will not see almost everyone I love (minus people who will visit, my parents and paul) for a year.  this is a long time.  a looooong time.  I think that I am allowed to be totally freaked out by that.

I’ve been talking to Tracy, the one of my future community members who lives here in cincy that I met a few weeks ago.  it’s been actually really nice, since we get along really well and we’re both personable and we’re both freaking out about the same things.  it’s good to have someone to say “holy crap I’m totally concerned about this!” and have them say “me too!” so at least you know you’re not the only one.

ready for vacay

I have two weeks of work left, after Paul and I return from our trip (for which we leave tomorrow, yipes).  even so, things are finishing up at work.  bro bob and I did my end of year evaluation yesterday (excellent, all the way) and I gave him my future contact info, which I think made him a bit depressed.  I’ve started cleaning out my desk, getting rid of anything left over from last year that I never used and all the junk I’ve accumulated.  I half filled our massive paper recycling bin.  we’re also finishing up all the end of year paperwork, due to cincinnati public schools next week.  this actually was quite fortunate, as our internet was out for a day and a half so I would have had pretty much nothing to do if I didn’t have files to sort, shred, and organize.  except for yesterday when bro bob made me tutor this kid and I yelled at him cause he was being stupid.  not bro bob.  the kid.  hmmm where DID I see Christ today?

responsible shopping is so hard

continuing the saga of “buying a new wardrobe to go to south america,” I went to American Apparel today.

I went to Goodwill the day before and got a short sleeved dress shirt and a polo shirt and a blue tshirt with nothing on it, successful, but I couldn’t find hardly any tshirts (only one) without words on it, and I’m avoiding tshirts with words.  for a variety of reasons.  also this year, after working so closely with the poor and watching such films as “Life and Debt” which was very good but totally freaked me out because of the whole “made in USA” stuff not actually being made in the USA, I’m becoming more and more concerned about how the products I use are made and more and more frustrated that I can’t control any of it.  sometimes I need things!  also, my grey zippered sweatshirt that I got in middle school is quite literally falling apart at the seams and I’ve needed a new one but couldn’t find one that was just plain grey and not all embelished with patterned lining or made with stretchy fabrics and I suspected that at American Apparel I’d be able to find a normal one.  I was.

I got a new grey sweatshirt that’s made for girls but isn’t all short and is 100% cotton!  I also got some tshirts with no words in a variety of colors and sizes.  nothing that I tried on or wanted to try on had spandexy crap.  I mean, they obviously had stretchy clothes but that was all the ridiculous styles that are all trendy.  true, I did pick up an oversize tshirt which is pretty trendy but it’s quite comfortable and would go well with some of my pants and I could wear in ecuador cause it’s modest.