2 days before take off

Right now I feel like the lyrics of that John Denver song Leaving on a Jet Plane yet I still have 48hrs before I even get on the plane. I should be practicing my Spanish and figuring out what to do with my bed, but instead I've been sitting at Epoch for the past 3 hrs trying to figure out how to create a damn blog and listening to the wonderful Alex Olison talk about vaginas.

I guess if you are reading this you already know my plans- or lack of them- a 6 month backpacking excursion through South America :) I am going alone, can't speak Spanish, don't exactly have my Visas, and I only have a one-way airplane ticket so I don't know when/how I'm getting back to the States but I'm currently fantasizing my crewman position on a sailboat. I fly into San Jose, Costa Rica May 24th, in which I will live with a family I know nothing about for a month. I'm pretty anxious to see the look on their faces when they see me- tall, blonde, dreadie, un poquito espanol speaking, holding one big backpack partially filled with:

2 pair of pants
2 t-shirts
one nice button-up in case I need to be snazzy
a handful of socks
swimtrunks
long sleeve
rainjacket
two-pair of fancy boxer briefs

All of my clothes bundled together weigh a whopping 4.8lbs- yep that's right, I weighed 'em.. that shit is important when your home is on your back. I still got a little more packed in there, though:

a week's worth of mallaria pills
a tiny computeer that weighs 3lbs
cheap camera
multi-vitamins
poo-poo pills
water filter
documents (passport, yellow fever record, etc...)
journals & pens
a really cool towel
toothbrush
a whole lot of tampons
barsoap
The Story of Forgetting book

I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole mess of things, but hopefully I've packed all I really need.
I've sold a lot stuff which was an awesome feeling of relief.

I sold my Macbook, a really nice camera lens, guitar & amp, I gave my TV & DVD player to a homeless man, and got rid of about 60lbs of clothing, along with a red dress I'm a little baffled about how it got in my closet to begin with? It is such a liberating feeling to shed myself from all these things I once owned. Yesterday I had a room with pictures on the wall, guitars on the floor, books on the shelf, my dog sleeping on the bed, a computer, and a whole slew of unfinished poems and credit card reciepts scattered across my desk.

Today, I woke up one the floor with just a bedsheet- nothing else- and it was such a beautiful surreal feeling waking up in my own bedroom and being completely unfamiliar with it. I made coffee and sat on the floor with the window open looking out. It felt like the first day I moved in. How it is both great and scary moving to a new place that you start calling home yet you really know nothing about it. Street names sound like foreign countries, when you get hungry you drive the access road because you know you can't get lost on it and are bound to come across something, when people ask you if you know such and such you can honestly answer No because you are new to town, and you discover that states like to have their own grocery stores like HEB.

I've only lived in Austin for barely two years and I feel like I've grown leaps & bounds in the short time I've been here. I'll probably be back, but it will be different or maybe just the same and I'll have been the one who changed or maybe all of it will happen. Who knows? People keep asking me why are you doing this? Why not just a few weeks or even a month traveling through the Amazon and hiking up the Andes? I don't know what to tell 'em. For me it isn't about the why as much as it is about the how and the because. Every night before I go to sleepI hit the map hanging behind my bed that I got out of a cereal box and whatever country/city/mountain/ocean my finger is pointing to I read a little about in the morning. I started this bedtime ritual of mine about 8 months ago. My finger never landed on South America much, though, and I think that is because it is a place I don't need to read about as much as I need to go. I am going to South America because I am- it feels right. This is the time I need to be canoeing through the Amazon, hiking the Andes, learning sustainability from the indigeous people who know the land better than anyone, communicating in a language other then the one I was taught because of the country I was born in. These are the things that make what I'm doing both exhilerating and terrifying.

There are two reasons people leave/move and they are either (1) going to a place (2) or leaving from one. Never both. I'm going to, not leaving from. There is a difference. I'm going to live on an entire continent in which they speak a language I know not, encounter things that have the ability to eat me, has a high propensity of muggings, a plethora of diseases, and some of the most corrupt border crossings in the world. In two days I'll be in the distance.

I'm looking forward to the adventure...
Stay tuned, I can't wait to tell ya 'bout the ride ahead...