That pic would probably be more appropriate if I weren't holding the fish skeletons, but it was the closest thing I could find to a photo of me looking excited and terrified... which are the two emotions I'm feeling right now since, two months from today, I'LL BE ON MY WAY TO MONGOLIA!!! Well, more or less... I'll be on my way to stateside staging. I technically won't leave for Mongolia until two months from tomorrow.
Anyway, this isn't much of a real post; I just wanted to mention that. And also this: ever since I began considering the Peace Corps in earnest, which was right around the beginning of my frosh year at Oberlin, I've tried to get a grasp on just how long twenty-seven months is. My main strategy has been to consider what I was doing twenty-seven months prior, and what had happened in the meantime. Back at the beginning of my college career, that interval seemed absolutely, unbelievably, nigh-on-insurmountably enormous. In the two and a quarter years that passed between July 2003 and September 2005, I'd gotten my first job, learned to drive a car, traveled to France and Spain for a two-week exchange program, gotten my first girlfriend, applied to college, graduated from high school, said good-bye to old friends, and made new ones at Oberlin, where I was now a student. I couldn't imagine spending that much time in a place about which I knew nothing. If such a huge amount had changed about me in that time, all while basically living at home, would I even be able to survive the same interval in a foreign country, living a life without many of the comforts and conveniences, not to mention people, I take for granted back home?
Those questions are still valid, but at least now the amount of time seems less daunting. In the twenty-seven months between January 2007 and now, I spent a semester living in Egypt and studying at the American University in Cairo, made some new friends there, saw a lot of awesome new places in the Middle East, lived in Boston for a summer, finished out my time at Oberlin, had a six-month relationship begin and end... and then there was graduation. Since then, besides the road trip, not all that much has happened in my life (as the previous post will tell you). Plus, there's that whole phenomenon where, as you age, the same amount of time (one year, two years, twenty-seven months...) comprises a lesser portion of your life as a whole. As a child, a year seems like a whole lifetime. Nowadays, it feels like it was just yesterday I was leaving for Cairo.
Point is, the mix of excitement and nervous terror has changed quite a bit in the last five years. I still feel both knowing that I'll be leaving in two months, but (thankfully), I feel a lot more of the former.
Anyway, this isn't much of a real post; I just wanted to mention that. And also this: ever since I began considering the Peace Corps in earnest, which was right around the beginning of my frosh year at Oberlin, I've tried to get a grasp on just how long twenty-seven months is. My main strategy has been to consider what I was doing twenty-seven months prior, and what had happened in the meantime. Back at the beginning of my college career, that interval seemed absolutely, unbelievably, nigh-on-insurmountably enormous. In the two and a quarter years that passed between July 2003 and September 2005, I'd gotten my first job, learned to drive a car, traveled to France and Spain for a two-week exchange program, gotten my first girlfriend, applied to college, graduated from high school, said good-bye to old friends, and made new ones at Oberlin, where I was now a student. I couldn't imagine spending that much time in a place about which I knew nothing. If such a huge amount had changed about me in that time, all while basically living at home, would I even be able to survive the same interval in a foreign country, living a life without many of the comforts and conveniences, not to mention people, I take for granted back home?
Those questions are still valid, but at least now the amount of time seems less daunting. In the twenty-seven months between January 2007 and now, I spent a semester living in Egypt and studying at the American University in Cairo, made some new friends there, saw a lot of awesome new places in the Middle East, lived in Boston for a summer, finished out my time at Oberlin, had a six-month relationship begin and end... and then there was graduation. Since then, besides the road trip, not all that much has happened in my life (as the previous post will tell you). Plus, there's that whole phenomenon where, as you age, the same amount of time (one year, two years, twenty-seven months...) comprises a lesser portion of your life as a whole. As a child, a year seems like a whole lifetime. Nowadays, it feels like it was just yesterday I was leaving for Cairo.
Point is, the mix of excitement and nervous terror has changed quite a bit in the last five years. I still feel both knowing that I'll be leaving in two months, but (thankfully), I feel a lot more of the former.
Wonderful post, John. You have a real way with words.
ReplyDeleteYour ever lovin' Auntie ~Marian