Trucking along

I've been lazy about updating lately so I should cover some of the big stuff. There's not much, lol. All I tend to do lately is sit around my room and slowly sift through all the crap that i need to sell. It's such a huge task, I have boxes and boxes full of stuff that i need to get rid of, and I'm just praying that I sell enough of it to pay for my plane ticket. Its nuts to think that I only have another three weeks in NY. It's going to be a lot harder to leave than I thought. When i originally made the decision to go, things seemed to be lined up perfectly. The last month or two as I've been preparing to go, I made some new connections with some pretty extraordinary people. It's going to be challenging leaving when I know people are wanting me to stay. I'm hoping I'll be able to fall back on those folks when I'm homesick and needing some support over there. Oh yeah, aside from saving up for a plane ticket, I also need a laptop so I can skype :/ Let's hope craigslist works its magic for me and I'm able to get rid of every last piece of this furniture. So here are the updates! First of all, I got my start date!! My first day at the group home is Jan 9th, and since I have to live with a host family for a month prior, I'll probably be leaving NJ the first or second week of December. This will be awesome on two accounts. First of all, my brother is coming home from Japan to visit the family in November, so now we can chill together. It's been about a year since I've seen him, which for my family is criminal. It'll be great to have everyone safe and together again, I'm really looking forward to it. Another great thing about leaving in Dec is that I'll be able to spend my 30th birthday here! I was feeling a little bummed about potentially arriving in a foreign country and then being alone for such a milestone, so I'm super psyched now :) As far as the paperwork process goes, I received a Welcome Packet in the mail last week from the organization and I've slowly been making my way through it. I had to get my doctor to fill out a physical form yesterday, so that's all set to go. I also got to start all my travel immunizations! That was kind of a big deal for me, it was the first time that I actually felt like "Ok, this isn't just talk, you're really going through with this." Here I am swallowing live typhoid, hooray!

Luckily I dont have to take many shots, being at Willowglen and in nursing school has forced me to get immunized to most things already. They're recommending rabies vaccine which I think I'm going to skip on. It's not a requirement and I really dont have to go through an expensive and painful process for nothing. Besides, the hospitals there have rabies vaccines, its not like they just let Guatemalan folks go rabid and die. If I get attacked by any crazy animals, you can guarantee that I'll be high-tailing it to the city for treatment. I'm going to mail all the info back tomorrow so hopefully that'll be all I need to do on my end! After that I just have to wait. Oh, I do need to call the company's insurance agent and see how much international medical insurance is going to cost me while I'm there. That's a big wildcard right now, it could be $30 a month or $300, I honestly have no clue how much to allot for this. Hopefully its not going to make things much harder financially. Some good news on that front though is that I'm getting my old job back when I move to NJ. I used to work a part time overnight job taking care of medically fragile kids while their parents slept. I told them I would be back for a few weeks and they said i could have some of my old cases back. I'm excited to see my kids, and also excited to bank away a bit of extra cash! This weekend should be pretty awesome. Tomorrow I'm heading to ikea with Dan (ok, not the most exciting), but I always love seeing him. Sunday I'm hosting a queer board game night for twenty of my closest friends ;) It'll be fun, we havent done one in a while and I'm looking forward to inviting some of my new friends to mingle with the veterans. Hopefully I'll have some pics to post of that!