Beginning

      I have always suffered tremendously when it came to writing an introduction.  Any paper I have ever written was composed in an odd format in which I always completed the introduction last.  It could have something to do with my borderline social awkwardness that tends to always make an appearance when I'm introducing myself to new people, but we will save that for another day.

     So, here I am.  Working on my first blog post since 10th grade.  I briefly had a Livejournal in 10th grade, but that was just entirely too cool for me. So I resorted back to my private journal and my trusty pen and put away thoughts of casting my thoughts and ideas on the internet for others to critique and judge. You see, since I was a little girl, I have always wrote everything down.  Even before I could write, I was fascinated with the movement of the pen on the paper.  Eventually, I did learn words, and that is when I got my first official journal.  It was green with frogs on it.  Not necessarily the backdrop for a child writing prodigy, but it was enough for me.  Since then, I have continuously kept a personal journal that I don't allow others to read.  So the idea of blogging is a little strange and unusual to me, but I'm sincerely hoping that blog and I can work well together.  Maybe we will even become good friends.  Time will tell.  

     Two paragraphs into my first blog post, and I'm afraid I have already neglected the point of my having a blog in the first place. 

    Two weeks from Sunday, I will be leaving everything I have ever known and moving to the Ukraine with the Peace Corps.  I hope you guys reading this are taking that better than a majority of my family did.  It's still all a little surreal to me that this is happening.  I have always wanted to join the Peace Corps, and when I finally decided to go through with it, I thought the continuous waiting mixed with bouts of paperwork were going to kill me.  And then I get the call that not only have I passed everything, but I have been placed.  That was and probably always will be one of the most exciting moments of my life.  

     I got the call exactly 8 weeks before the departure time they had initially told me at the beginning of the process.  Since that moment, my life has been a chaotic mess of packing, planning, researching, and learning.  I have been going on an adrenaline high since then and I think it might just carry me all the way there.  

    I know a lot of my friends and family reading this blog have a lot of questions about the process, what I'll actually be doing, safety, etc.  And I fully plan on doing a post specifically designed to answer those and other such questions.  But for now, I am happy and content in knowing that the adventure I have been waiting for is vastly approaching.  A lot of my friends and some family have asked me if I'm sure about this decision.  My answer to them is always the same.  I tell them of course I'm not sure about this, but it's my dream.  I don't know anyone who is 100 percent certain that their dreams are meant to be fulfilled, but I do know I wouldn't miss the opportunity to follow mine.