The Adventure Starts Now!

Today we landed in Phnom Penh and already things are bustling right along. A few of us found an internet cafe, hence the blogging (I want to get a t-shirt that says, in Khmer, "I am SO blogging this!" but I don't think they make any....At any rate, Phnom Penh reminds me a great deal of Jiamusi, the city where I lived in China. I believe this will help in my transitioning, so now my biggest concern is learning the language.

I will update more as I can, and remember that you are loved and cherished from half a world away.

In the beginning...

I registered for the Peace Corps today...lots of fun filling out forms and talking about safety, anxieties and aspirations, policies, and expectations.

I've met the people that will be my fellow volunteers and they all seem to be really cool so far. There are quite a lot of us from the Seattle area--the U.W. is the Peace Corps' largest provider of volunteers, I guess, and it turns out that even if you're just FROM the area a not a Dawg you're more likely to apply for the PC. Who knew!?

I'm excited to begin the next part of this adventure--I have a LOT of travel in front of me (Tokyo, Bangkok, and Phnom Penh all a day apart from each other) and then we jump into training with both feet.

Here's to challenge, growth, and the benefits afforded by caffein.

A little adversity makes us stronger...or at least that's what they say...

Good golly, miss molly...it's been a week, that's for sure.

On July 5th I broke down and finally bought a new lap top--my old one served me faithfully through college, but it finally gave out due to old age. The speakers stopped working about six months ago, then the power button, then the power cord almost frayed the whole way through, and most recently the machine itself has started to fail to shut down. SO...it was off to Best Buy to pick out the new one.

On the way home we got a call that my uncle had been in a very serious motorcycle accident in Eastern Washington and was being airlifted to Harborview. At that time he was not expected to live. Several days later he is still in the ICU, but markedly improved.

Tuesday we were leaving the ICU waiting room when my mom's cell phone went off. It was her little brother calling to say they were taking my grandfather to the hospital. So off we rushed.

The stress and exhaustion mounts day by day, but I hold out hope that this is all the medical emergencies my family will experience in the next two years. What all is ahead for my family, I'm not sure, but the reality of my absence weighs heavily on my mind.

As I sat in the hospital with my grandfather today, he reminded me that if we never face adversity we never know the depth and breadth of our character; and if we don't know the depth and breadth of our character, we cannot say we know ourselves. And so I take pause to search and know just who I am, and on what foundation I stand as I begin my next greatest adventure.