Three days, nineteen hours and thirteen inches later. Last Saturday at 2:00pm was another milestone in preparations for heading abroad. About five and one half years ago, my brother, Michael, decided to enlist in the Coast Guard. At the time, he was 24 years old and had a head of long, straight dirty blonde hair. Upon arriving in Cape May, New Jersey, Uncle Sam saw fit to cut it all off, officially beginning the dehumanization and reprogramming process. So, that day I decided to start growing my hair long as a personal protest. Well, Saturday, my protest officially ended. I will be sending a thirteen inch pony tail to locksoflove.org which will be used to make hairpieces for financially disadvantaged kids who have long term medical hair loss. It would have been far too difficult to travel with all of that hair and the Department of Homeland Security does not look too fondly upon bottles of product!
On other fronts, Idalis has two weeks of school left and then leaves for Phoenix in June and Charlotte in July for National Board training. I have thirty seven days of work left, as of today. Preparations continue. The ipod continues to get fed with music to accompany us on our long journey. Visa applications go in soon. And mid-life retirement party plans move into high speed. We are currently hosting Olivia and Omid, from Switzerland and Germany, respectively. They were our first guests through hospitalityclub.org. An organization I highly recommend if you don't mind opening your home to travelers and spending time hosting good people from all over the world. It has been a wonderful experience, though it has reminded me how old I am getting seeing as Olivia and Omid are only nineteen and twenty. I couldn't help them too much with their inquiries about the hottest clubs to visit!
Every day, the journey becomes more and more real. Your focus begins to change and realign with your new goals. Idalis and I are also starting to ponder the reality of being away from our friends and family for an extended period of time. We have been doing all we can to spend as much time as possible with them. We were recently involved in the wedding of our good friends Shawn and Sarah. It was great to see them so happy and it was great to be part of something so special. To the rest of our friends and family, and there are a lot of you, we thank you for your support and words of encouragement. It will be the thoughts of you that will help to ease lonely times, which are bound to happen, and the prospect of returning to your loving arms that will make the transition homeward much more comforting!
