Well. This should be interesting.

Tonight I probably won't sleep. Or I'll most certainly have a lot of trouble sleeping. And now I'm regretting telling my dad that we can say goodbye tomorrow when he leaves for work at the ungodly hour of 7 AM (in some circles, ahem, not too many hours post-bedtime...), because in truth it will most likely be one of the few moments in my life that I will not be able to fall immediately back to sleep at such an early hour. Knowing myself, instead of sleeping, I'll probably end up rolling around in forever uncomfortable positions, and driving my mind absolutely sick with how scary and crazy and new tomorrow and the next six weeks will be. If I do manage to drift into sleep, I'll most definitely dream of either losing all my luggage somewhere along the way (and therefore being left with a lone pair of jean shorts and a small baggie of trail mix to last me a month and a half in a developing country (is that the PC term??)), or of some foreign Ugandan man who I don't understand tricking me at the airport and kidnapping me and then injecting me with ebola and then me bleeding through my eyelids and... etc.

So. As the title of my blog suggests, tomorrow I'll set off on what will surely be the strangest and newest experience I've ever encountered. I'll be flying through Amsterdam and then to Entebbe, Uganda, and from there traveling to Namayumba, Uganda--a village some 50 km away from Kampala, the capital. I'm not going with any sort of program (mistake? we're yet to find out...), but instead am simply following my friend from school, Mel, who's worked in Namayumba and in a nearby village, Nansana, for the past few summers. She helped the villagers build a secondary school in Namayumba, and I'll be spending most of my time in this school teaching English. I believe that a lot of the students are actually orphans, and many are sadly living with AIDs. I'll be volunteering there with Mel and about 4 other volunteers our age. Other than that, I literally have no idea what to expect. Oh. And I also know, as I alluded to earlier, that a couple cases of ebola, a highly contagious and deadly virus, have recently emerged in Uganda and Sudan. Perfect timing!

In order to prepare myself mentally for the unknown, and medically for this super scary virus and for malaria, etc., I've stuffed my suitcase with hand wipes, face wipes, (other wipes...), dozens of bottles of hand sanitizer, extremely strong bug spray, and even my own plasticware--just to be safe. But in reality, among all my medicines and cleaning devices and things that I can use for toilet paper (just in case there's an emergency!!) I know somewhere that I'll be just fine. And more than that, I'll probably even grow and learn a few things along the way. And there is about 1 millionth of a chance--if I've calculated correctly--that I'll get ebola and start bleeding through my eyelids (which really happens!!! scary stuff), so THERE, ebola! There.

Anywho, I'll try to update this blog as often as I can. My track record, i.e. my blog from my year in Israel, indicates that I may sometimes lag behind a bit, or neglect to write for weeks at a time...but since I'm only going for six weeks, and since I know Pam Slifer will be sitting at her computer anxiously awaiting my next post ( ;-) ), I will try my very best to keep this up. Also, I really don't know what the internet situation will be like (another unknown! among the state of electricity? running water? who knows! err... thrilling.), so I don't know how often I'll be able to update.

And that's about all for now. All in all, as nervous as I am, I'm happy I'm doing this, and happy I'm doing it on my own. It will be important for me to go somewhere strange, to experience true independence on a completely separate continent, to take a break from the internet and those who I'm most comfortable with and my bed and general quarter-life crisis stress--to just take a break from everything and step back and see how other people live, and try something absolutely different. And more than learning about other peoples' lives, I think that by stepping away like this I'll importantly gain perspective on my own. Or at least that's my hope. First, I have to somehow catch some sleep, then endure 20 hours of traveling and more hours of dirt-road driving.... So for now, signing off, and next time - in Uganda!

P.S. Thank you so so so so much to my amazing parents for helping me prepare for this trip, and also for enduring my spontaneous bouts of very high stress along the way. :)