Good-byes and Hellos.

It has been an interesting past couple of weeks: weeks of discovery. You never really recognize the strength of the friendships you currently have until time and fate (circumstance) threatens to pull you away from them like clock whose ticks grow lowder and tocks race closer to the hour of reckoning. Maybe it is because we take the friendships we have and situations and circumstances we've been given for granted when we are able to settle back into life's comfy brown leather couch. You tend to looks past its slight tears and minute flaws. It just becomes a brown leather couch the more and more you sit on it. As I've noted these circumstances of life in my head, I feel a need for much more active appreciation; an active appreciation of all of my surroundings: objects and people. So, as time creeps closer for me to embark on my journey, I grow closer to those I love and appreciate, and oh how I appreciate them so much more. Just the other day, I was at a sort of "send off" party for my friend who's leaving for Central/South America, when I noticed my friend Kristi had the same bag as I had recently ordered online. I asked her about it, and instead of continuing on with her conversation elsewhere, she took the time to explain everything about it to me. Not only was she excited about her bag, but she was excited to share it with me. It took me aback. I, and everyone else, know that she is an amazing caring person, but it takes moments like that for you to realize how lucky you are to have the friends that you do. I'm leaving for another country and so is one of my friends, and together we realized that it is not a sad event but a happy one. All of my close friends are leading their lives to very exciting places.

On the other end of this odd spectrum, I have for some reason barraged and been barraged by countless posts/messages/statuses on facebook about, from and to all of these new people who I am soon to meet. Never have we met face to face. In fact, we have barely known eachother's names for more than a week, I'd guess, yet we are all so excited about this new adventure half-way across the world, that we cannot contain that excitement and feel the utmost need to ask the most ridiculous of questions: "Should I buy the $52 English-Khmer dictionary or the $14 concise version?" How often in your life do you ask that sort of a question to someone you barely know. I can tell you; it's at the moment when life not threatens, but gives you a sm...big push into a scary, exciting, adventurous, unknown path filled with 600lbs cat fish and sting-rays with 14ft wingspans. Now, that is a path you don't head into very often. But, it's here, and I'm ready for it, and, so it seems, is everyone else joining me.