It’s that time again… I’m off on another adventure! This Sunday afternoon I will jump on a plane that will take me (via a few stopovers) to Dakar, Sénégal in West Africa where I will be living, studying, and working for six months.
My bags are packed (I have a thing about being hyper-prepared way in advance), weighing in at 48.8, 17.2, 15.8, and 4.8 pounds. My passport, complete with a fancy Sénégalese visa is at the ready and I have now checked to see if my flight (which is still two days away) is on time approximately 500 times. My to-do list is dwindling, despite my best efforts to replenish at any chance I get. I’m planning out the menus of my final family meals of 2013 and taking pictures of my dog left and right, just in case I forget what she looks like between now and March 2014.
It’s leaving time again. I’ve done this before – for Kenya in 2010 and 2012, when I left for my first year of college. But each set of ‘final’ days is an odd mix of excitement and nervousness, happiness and sadness. But this is different than the others. When I left for college, I was a ball of nerves and didn’t know what to expect; but I had reliable means of contacting my friends and family and the comforts of home were basically all still around me. When I’ve left for Kenya, I have been sad to leave my family and home for so long, but it’s always felt like Kenya was just an extension of my home, an extension of my family and so I’ve never felt unsure.
I’m going somewhere totally new and foreign to me. I don’t know anything of the family I am to live with, the home I am to stay in for the next half a year. I don’t really know that much about what I’ll be doing from day to day. I only sort of know one of the languages I’ll be speaking and only barely know how to say ‘hello’ in the other. I don’t even know if they drink or even sell coffee in Dakar, which for some reason is the one thing that is freaking me out about my soon-to-be home.
There are many unknowns. And that could be terrifying. And sometimes when I look through my French to English dictionary because I realize I’ve somehow forgotten the word for ‘pleased to meet you’, I am terrified (it’s enchanté…fairly well-known).
But mostly I’m just really, really excited. Excited to learn. Excited to soak up all the growth from all of the unknowns. Excited to just be there.
And so, so grateful for the incredible opportunity to have this experience. As I was doing some last-minute errands today, suddenly I just felt the magnitude of blessings I have had in my life to have been able to have so many exciting, nerve-wracking, life-changing, growing experiences.
And I can’t wait to live out my gratefulness by being present and living fully each day of this adventure in Sénégal.
So off I go.
As I have before, I hope to use this blog as a way to reflect, process, and share my experiences over the next few months both through writing and pictures. It means so much to me that you will all be joining me along the journey.
In gratitude and excitement,
Callie
* For more information about my time in Sénégal go to the ‘Sénégal’ tab and click on ‘Sénégal FAQs
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callie daniels-howell 