Things are starting to come together. Officially, I’ve got less than 2 months until I get on the plane at Detroit Metro International. I know that there’s still a good deal of time left, some people don’t even get their invites until 6 weeks prior to leave, but I’m feeling a crunch to get things in gear. I’ve been making a packing list and getting started in the process of finding/ordering things on that list. For example, I ordered my medic alert necklace a few days ago. As of yesterday, I have all of my luggage and I think that my order for my chacos has been placed (they haven’t sent any sort of confirmation or charged me yet- I think an email is in order). Realizing that I don’t really have any “warm weather” teacher clothes and not wanting to spend a boatload on new stuff (which hasn’t really been sent to stores yet- they’re still trying to unload their sweaters and coats) I headed over to Value Village and found three dresses that fit and don’t look completely frumpy and/or ill-fitting. I had found a fourth, but somehow I lost it while I was in the store. How does that happen?
On a similarly related note, I got a CD from the PC Philippines office in the mail two days ago. Last night I finally got around to looking at it (I had to remember how to revert to IE as my default browser to access it) and it certainly gave me some interesting dreams. I don’t remember exactly what was going on, but it was the first time I’ve felt any sort of nervousness or anxiety about going. It probably didn’t help that I was reading the water safety information, with rap sheets on dangerous aquatic fauna, right before I went to bed. It’s hard to keep perspective and remember that the ocean isn’t teeming with poisonous creepy swimmies waiting to attack as soon as you dip in your toe, it just seems that way from the literature provided. Almost made me rethink my desire to get my open water SCUBA certs during service, but not quite. I think I’m still going to go through with that- sea urchins, barracudas, jellyfish, sharks and all. I’ve heard it’s a worthwhile thing to do- but I guess we’ll see what happens when I get there.