Hey there, dear readers! My apologies for cross-blogging, but I have two blogs going on and I poured out most of my recent thoughts in the other (to mainly transition to this one...), so you should check this post out first! KEMS Blessings Blog - feel free to follow that one too if you like, but I'll mainly be using this travel blog for my upcoming year of service in Tucson, Arizona! First, check out some photos of moving many of my life's possessions into storage due to the fact that my dear parentals decided to downsize out of the house I've lived in since childhood... just when I'm about to leave for a year. Needless to say, the past few days have been a little bit of craziness, but you have to keep it interesting, right? It did work alright to just pack up much of my life while making all the decisions of what I really needed/wanted (you have to ask the need versus want question a lot when you can only check two pieces of luggage to bring with you for a year) to take with me for my time in Arizona. In any event, transitions went quickly and things somehow got done, but here's some of the process!
Dear old Dad, showing off his SpongeBob duct tape.
Getting creative with the storage space!
Hmmm, what to do next?
There were a couple more carloads to storage after this, begging the question, "How have I accumulated so many things
in my time on this earth?!" And it boils down to three main threads:
I've been fortunate to buy a few things in my time, I've been fortunate
to be able to save many things that hold memorial value, and I've been
fortunate to have been given many things to move me towards adult life -
for instance, tons of hand-me-downs from grandparents and parents from
various downsizing adventures.
I'm thankful for all I have been given up to this point, and I'm also thankful for all the YAV program gives us for the next year. Like a house. Hopefully stocked with kitchen supplies and whatnot. But we'll see! For now, my bags have been packed, and I have arrived successfully in Stony Point, New York, where all the Young Adult Volunteers (YAVs), do orientation together for a week before we disperse to our sites around the country and world. My checked luggage didn't quite get this far, but that's another story. I'm safe and I'm here after a long day. I was safely brought to the MSP airport, but my flight from MSP to Chicago got delayed by an hour and 20 minutes when my layover was only an hour long... So needless to say I got here a bit later than the 6pm expected time given I had a couple standby flights to try, and then they routed me to LaGuardia instead of the intended Newark, however, my bags still went to Newark... Thank goodness for a new tshirt at orientation! And also thank goodness for a young mom who ended up in the same travel situation from MSP to supposedly Newark, as we went through the whole saga together and became fast travel buddies, keeping each other in light spirits throughout the mess. When we were getting our new LaGuardia flights, she actually put me ahead of her in line, and I was the last one to get a boarding pass for the 5pm flight so she only got on standby. Due to her kindness and sacrifice, she didn't get out until the 8pm flight and she has to present at her conference in the morning. It was so wonderful to connect with her and have a companion for the craziness, and I hope that we can connect again in the future so that I can repay her kindness by doing some portrait photography with her kids!
And now, I'm here and ready to get oriented. The program is already so welcoming, I have a sweet roommate, and I'm ready for tomorrow! After some sleep :-)
Until soon - hasta pronto!
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