Goodbyes

My plane departs for Philadelphia at 8:50 tomorrow morning and I’m staying with Scott, one of my college roommates. I’ll be in Philadelphia until Wednesday morning when we’ll take a bus to JFK to catch an evening flight to Johannesburg. From there we’ll take a morning flight on Friday to Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.

I think the significance of saying goodbye to my family today will hit me tomorrow. The buildup and anticipation of finally getting onto the plane for Philly seems to have numbed me a little more than usual. Transitions of the last couple weeks have felt much more like a sense of continuation than the piece-wise function (that one is for the nerds) that it might be for those around me. My mom just experienced me coming home from Los Angeles, where I’ve lived for the last 6 years (which she reminds me has been a quarter of my life lived too far away from her), for a week before leaving to Africa for over two years. And although she is extremely supportive of me, and has been through the entire Peace Corps process, it is all much more disconnected and abrupt for her. Comparatively, I have been packing up stuff for the last 4 months and during that time have said goodbye to two roommates, moved twice, said goodbye to a good friend who left LA before I did, and transitioned out of a great community at the job I’ve had for the last two and a half years. I have been preparing to leave for quite a while now, and I’m in a period of constantly looking forward to the next couple days. So the last four months of preparation coupled with excitement left me somewhat unemotional (yeah, yeah, big surprise) during goodbyes, while my family was not. I think the 5 hour flight tomorrow will allow me time to think about the significance of two years away after saying goodbye to my family and friends.