T-minus 24 days

Well, it's Monday again which means I am yet another week closer to my departure on August 21st. My paperwork is basically finished as of this past weekend. My classes have been approved, my medical forms have been reviewed, my visas have been processed, and I've started packing. I may publish my finalized packing list eventually, but for now it is a work in progress and I seem to think of new things I should take every few minutes.

I'm just under four weeks away from departure (24 days 3 hours and 13 minutes), and I still cannot believe that I will soon be leaving the country for close to five months. Over the course of evaluating my packing list I have realized a few things:

1. I have more stuff than I really need.

For the past two years I lived on campus at school with a nice room of my own. My room was filled with cool lights, trendy art, adventure gear, and two closets full of clothes. While none of those things are inherently bad, the truth is that most of those things have been packed away in boxes for the past ten weeks, and I haven't missed them at all. As a matter of fact, my life has been way simpler now that most of my belongings are packed away in boxes. Aside from a few changes of clothes, a computer, phone, and camera, most of the things I pack up and take to school would be better left in a box. Hopefully this spartan mentality will prevail as I pack for my trip, but that will be another post entirely. What I do know is that when I get back from my trip I need to spend some serious time evaluating what I take back to school with me and what I don't need anymore.

2. The things I really need are not things I can pack into a suitcase.

I'm about to leave on a grand adventure around the Atlantic Ocean. I am being provided with an opportunity that very few have been blessed with and I could not be more thankful-but in the process I am coming to grips with all of the other ways I have been blessed as well. I have been blessed with family who are supporting me, mentors who have guided me, and friends who have invested in me. In 24 days 3 hours and 4 minutes (as of this moment) I am going to leave all of that behind to take on a new adventure. I'll be making new friend along the way, but in a sense I will be making this journey alone. My parents, friends, and mentors don't get to come with me-in fact the only piece of them that can travel across the ocean with me is the person I am because of them. My journey started long before I began putting clothes into a bag, but I am  just weeks away from having most of what I know stripped from me in a process that will force me to grow. Like a recent high school graduate approaching college, I am at a junction where I am grateful for the experiences of my past because of the unknown that dominates my future.

There are plenty of other thoughts swirling around in my head, but none are coherent enough for words just yet. I promise when the words come to me I'll put them here, so check back when you can!

24 days 2 hours and 55 minutes...

Changing Course

Looking over my previous blog posts it has become painfully obvious that I have not been as dedicated to this project as I initially thought I would be. Shocker. I like to document events and lessons learned, but in the months since I started this blog only a few things have been deemed exciting enough to qualify for, "blog-worthy status," explaining why my posts are few and far in between (laziness is another possible factor, but fixing that issue is too hard). Quite frankly, this blog had no focus when I started it. I aim to fix that starting now.
I find that I only want to write about exciting life lessons, and when I do write it tends to ramble quite a bit, so I'm going to take a new approach. As of now, I am going to document my adventure with succinct stories about what I've been doing and hopefully the lessons and adventures will trickle through.
In exactly one month, I will be traveling to London, UK where I will board the 590-foot MV Explorer, an ocean liner managed by the Institute for Shipboard Education. Over the course of 4 months I will travel to 18 ports in 16 countries on four continents while taking classes on board the ship. Most of the tedious paperwork for my voyage has been completed, and my plane tickets have been purchased. Now it is time to start packing and thinking through exactly what I will need on my trip around the world. It hasn't really sunk in yet that I am leaving the country for such an extended period of time, but I know as soon as I start putting notebooks and socks into my suitcase it is going to hit me like a ton of bricks.
I'll use this blog to post updates about what I've been up to and where I am in my journey. Follow me or check back often to see what I'm up to!