Island to Island

Remember the movie "Jungle 2 Jungle"? I hated that movie. Freakin Mimisiku.

Looks like I left St. Peter on Sunday just before it turned into an island. It's fitting; leaving my newly waterlogged home of the past four years only to relocate to another island for the next twenty-six months.

Today's post isn't anything too exciting, just pre-departure feelings. I figure, if I've got a blog, might as well use it.

Today might very well be the first day I've actually allowed myself to be excited about all of this. Up to this point, I've been really nervous and scared: the usual feelings anyone embarking on something completely new would feel. Throughout the last month, since I got the invitation, I've reminded myself of all the great things I've experienced that I was scared to do or wanted to back out of: I had a freak out before college started; I wanted to drop out of the wilderness trip before freshman year (it would have been so much easier to just move in with all the other freshmen, I thought. Never have I ever moved into GAC on an actual move-in day.). Now two of us from the wilderness trip are in the Peace Corps; that's a pretty good stat. I also realized part of my apprehension about everything is that, as of right now, I'm completely on my own with this. This will be the first time I've really gone anywhere by myself; I've never even been on a plane alone. All my trips have been with band or Spanish club. This gets to the heart of my newest excitement: meeting the other volunteers!

I looked up pictures of the hotel we'll be staying at while in Apia, the capitol of Samoa. It reminds me a lot of the hotel I stayed at in Paracas when I went to Peru in high school, which gives me mixed feelings. Peru was gorgeous, but I never saw myself living there or loving it. I'm hoping to fall in love with Samoa. A week from right now, it'll be about 12:30 in Samoa, which means I will probably either be sleeping in the hotel after an early morning arrival, or we will have already started with PST (pre-service training). Maybe two weeks from now, I'll already have fallen in love with Samoa.

One thing I haven't read anywhere: MONKEYS. Are there monkeys in Samoa? I wonder what the Peace Corps policy is on pets.

I'm looking forward to being trilingual after all of this.

"Bilingual, trilingual, and American." Let's break that stereotype, shall we?

Also, pictures will come...well, when they happen. We should have internet access in Apia.