Two Weeks To Go

Anxiety and anticipation wreck my stomach with butterflies. If I'm not feeling the stress from the situation of teaching up until the time I leave, I'm getting excited about the journey. This doesn't leave much time for reflection and the realization that what I have in Sacramento will soon be in the past.

I wonder about the prospect of giving up everything that I have here; that I've built over the course of five years. Sacramento has been a great place for me in many ways. During my time here I've worked some great jobs - like at HandsOn Sacramento (now HandsOn Superior California for some stupid reason!). During that time I also works as a consultant for Roberts Family Development Center and as the interim Director of Education at Sacramento RAFT (Resource Area For Teaching).  I have become a university professor at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) during my time here. I have taught writing tutorials and full-on freshman composition classes, even when my own composition skills are wanting! I volunteered to conduct writing tutorials for the English Language Institute (ELI) at CSUS every Friday for a year. I also worked at ELI teaching groups from Korea in the ALC (American Language & Culture), and I am currently working full time, teaching five classes, at ELI.  I have gone from recently graduating with my B.A. to a university professor with M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Crazy!

I'm 34 and going to give it (or sell it) all away.  I've done this before when I moved to Costa Rica to go to the National University of Costa Rica, and that worked out just fine. In fact, I think that is probably the single best decision I've ever made.  And I expect the Peace Corps to fall into the same category of decisions. I keep telling people who ask, and some that don't, that it seems like organized adventure.  I don't have to pay anything and they organize everything for me.  They fly me there, train me, find a job for me, find an apartment for me, find a job for me, and pay almost nothing. But who needs money when you've brought a good pair of hiking boots and a tent?

So, in two weeks from today, after I collect my grammar finals and watch my reading class give their presentations on their reading process, I will head out to the Sacramento airport and board a plane that'll arrive in Philadelphia at 6:15am the next day - that's 3:15 Sacramento time. I will then start my training at 8:30am - that's 5:30am our time.  It's going to be a long day, but it's the start to what'll be a short two years. I feel like my old chief Mize who was always counting down to when we took the submarine back over and could go to sea - 14 and a wake-up.

19 Days and Counting

Things are now settled with my departure date.  I will be leaving in the evening on the 11th of March and will arrive in Philadelphia for staging at just after 6 am after a pass through LAX. It should take less than a half hour to make it to the hotel once I have my bags, and then the first class starts at 8 am. That night, since I won't be able to sleep on the plane probably, I will get some much needed rest and be ready for class the next day.

The next day, Friday the 13th!, will be my final day in the United States for over two years.  I do not plan on coming back during my Peace Corps hiatus because it doesn't make sense to me to spend so much money on coming back to a place that I will come back to.  It's like Costa Rica, I lived there for almost three years, so why would I want to go back and visit Costa Rica? I wouldn't. I lived in Las Vegas for three years too, but I don't know why I would want to go and visit there either.  It just doesn't make much sense to me to visit places that you've lived... but I digress.

Here's the plan for my final day in the United States - no matter the weather, I'm going to make the 18 minute walk from my hotel to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.  Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow will keep me from making my visit to the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed, dawning the country in which I was born, raised, and educated (mostly). I look forward to that time, standing there in front of two symbols of America that I have heard of for so long but have never seen with my own eyes. I think of that moment because it will represent the end of the last full day on American soil and the start of a life-informing, -directing adventure.

Travel Arrangements Gone Wild

Let me express how pleased I was to find out that my depart date for the Peace Corps was March 13th.  This is because my teaching contract is over on March 12th.  This seems like a perfect situation, other than how rapid the whole situation would be.  Then today I got an email from the staging unit that I would be leaving on the 11th.  However, I cannot leave that day, and especially not at 6am, which is when the travel agency booked me even after I expressed that I would not be able to fly at that time.  I met them half-way and said that I could fly in the pm, which would allow me to get to Philadelphia by the early registration time on the morning of the 12th - when I should honestly still be teaching, or at least holding conferences with my students.

As I am tying this, I just got an email with a request to take a later flight and arrive in PA on the morning of the 12th, which I can swing.  I quickly found the email that stated the 13th of March as my date of departure and also emailed the guy making the decision to give him some background.  I hope that being organized and preemptive will allow me to get the situation sorted.

I know this isn't freewriting because I'm writing for an audience, but I will tell that I doubt that too many people will come across this blog.  I'm doing it for me, and so the click-klack on the keyboard is more of a personal outlet.  I write and put my frustrations on the paper, and there they remain.

There is an obvious solution to the above situation, and it should work out - I'm hopeful.

Less Than Five Weeks Out

Inspired by friend Leanne's Blog, I have decided to make another uninteresting entry into my own. The biggest problem with a blog for me is, that I know I will make grammatical mistakes as I reword my writing to say exactly - closely resembling - what I want to say.  I read other's blogs and wonder why my own are so flawlessly executed. I am inspired by the questions and experiences of others that I would love for myself, and that brings me to write a monotonously boring entry with the expressed purpose of bringing myself to realization that I'm about to embark on a life changing journey-adventure, even as I sit in Sacramento at the Beach Hut Deli.

So let's do a life-GPS check:  I am under 5 weeks out from leaving for the Peace Corps (that's weeks you can count on ONE HAND!). There is currently an open house going on, and I had two interested parties come see my house yesterday.  I have not sold my house... or my car... or my motorcycle, and I have not plan on how to get all of my stuff out of my house.  I need to call Sticks and get this all in order. Sticks is my former step-dad and dad.  I never knew my birth father growing up, and Sticks has stuck around and been my father. He has come to see me when I was in the military and stationed in Georgia, and when I was living in Costa Rica - no one else did.

I really am at the Beach Hut Deli because they have free wifi, and I had grading to do and needed to be out of my place due to the open house.  I have an hour and a half left before I can return home, so here I sit typing out this blog entry.

There are some things that I find highly admirable that I can't seem to incorporate into my own life.  One of those is having the discipline to write a blog on a regular basis.  The other is to read and expand my knowledge without having to enroll in a class.  One nice thing about being teacher is that other people rely on you to read or do what you say you're going to. This give me the motivation to read articles that I wouldn't normally read. It ensure that I read them thoroughly so that I am knowledgeable when it comes time to hold class.  I hope that I will live up to this same expectation as I become a teacher-trainer in Albania.  I will read, diligently, articles that I have assigned so that I will be able to ensure an understand worthy of passing my class.  This sense of integrity is some way to blackmail myself into doing the work I want to do, but to don't possess the fortitude to follow-through.

With that said, I love where I'm at right now.  I know that I will figure it all out.  I know that the insecurities will be resolved, and I will embark on the adventure of a lifetime in less than five weeks. I wanted to mention how down-to-the-line I'll get.  I will hold classes on the last day of the session, which is Thursday, March 12.  I will depart for staging (somewhere in the US) the very next day, which is Friday the 13th.

I am excited.  I am ready.  I really am looking forward to the journey, adventure, and connections that I'll make. Less than 5 weeks now, and then maybe I'll actually have something to write about.