Time to hop on a plane and head to yet another undiscovered corner of the world.
I must say, no matter how many times I do this, I'm always greeted by that familiar mix of fear and excitement as I zip closed that last suitcase and head to the airport.
I keep thinking that at some point that twinge of homesickness will fade. Or that heading off into the unknown will somehow lose its intoxicating pull. And time and again I'm proven wrong.
I hope that never changes.
I always want to love my family and home deeply enough that I'm sad to leave them. And I always want the hope for what's on the horizon to keep pulling me forward.
Now, I may be watching too much Downton Abbey or reading entirely too much historical fiction, but every now then as I step foot into the airport, I imagine myself to be some plucky 19th century heroine. (You know the ones I mean--we all spent countless hours reading about them in our high school English classes...or in SparkNotes.)
I imagine us on our parallel journeys, separated only by the years. There she stands in her traveling best, anxiously awaiting her future. There I stand hoping I got my flight times right. She, with her worn leather suitcase in hand; me, with my bright turquoise backpack and guitar. She goes off to board her carriage or steamship or train and I slip into my economy class plane seat and pray for sleep. And then we are both whisked away to a world we've never known, where we will encounter curious people and adopt new customs and feel entirely overwhelmed with the strangeness of it all, and sometimes wish that we had just stayed at home. But somehow, in the end, we will find that we've formed an unexpected bond with our new home away from home and will return (or not) a person at once the same and different.
Sometimes, I imagine that.
Strangely enough, my overactive imagination helps to quiet some of those needling fears that tell me I'm crazy for heading off alone to the sixth poorest country in Latin America. One that, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has the highest homicide rate in the world. Thinking of all of the uncertainties that young women, both real and fictional, have faced as they've set out to fulfill their own calling, gives me a sense of peace as I set out to follow my own.
There's so much I'm looking forward to this year--continuing to learn Spanish, exploring a brand new country, trying my hand at teaching something other than English. I know that, as with each time before, my experience this year will not consist of the things I have planned for, but all of those things that I will have neither expected nor anticipated. Those are the stories and memories I'll bring home with me (and which will make up the content of my blog entries).
And so, faithful bloggies, we're off once again.
