Ground Control to Major Tom

            Today is my last full day in the US for almost four months. This is the first time in my life that I can say that. My backpack is completely packed up, I’ve said goodbye to my friends and most of my family, I’ve printed out the information about the hostel I’ve booked, and soon I’ll be printing out my boarding pass for the flight from Houston to Lima that I’ll be on in 24 hours. The excitement about this trip has been building for months, and now it’s right about at its peak. At the beginning of May, I wrote a countdown of the days until this trip would start on the calendar that hangs beside my bed. Looking over at that calendar now, it’s almost surreal to see the number 1 on today’s date. Knowing that I’ve gotten everything taken care of certainly helps keep the pre-departure nerves at bay. I’ve gotten my yellow fever vaccine, I’ve got my Bolivia visa application, I’ve exchanged US dollars for some Peruvian and Chilean money (since I’ll be spending time in those countries as well), I’ve let my debit/credit card companies know that I’ll be using the cards abroad… I think I’m getting pretty good at this whole travel preparation thing.

            Once I get to the Bolivia Wildlife Sanctuary on Wednesday, I won’t have a wifi connection. As I may have mentioned in a previous blog post, there’s a town about twenty minutes away from the sanctuary that volunteers can take taxis to and use the internet cafes. I won’t be doing that every day, of course, but my goal is to be able to post updates at least once a week. I’ll also try to post another update before I get to the sanctuary, but tomorrow will be a day full of travel, and the next day I want to have some time to go out and explore the area of Lima around my hostel, so no promises on that one.

            I guess this will be one of the shorter blog posts as of late, since there’s really not a lot of news to give. I just wanted to give one more update from home. This post’s food for thought:       “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.”- Charles Dudley Warner