counting down the days

i have already started counting down the days until i leave for global. i got a new suitcase (drop bottom duffel) for a great price - these came highly recommended from previous globalites so hopefully it will work for me. lately it has just really start to hit home how much i'm giving up to do so. obviously, football and all of my brothers on the team. but also, friends and family's birthdays, all the holidays - especially christmas. i spent easter away from home a couple years ago, but christmas is the time when traditionally the whole family gathers. i will be sad to miss out on it.

also, just all of the memories that will be made here that i will not be able to be apart of: my sister's first semester of college, football season and the new rookies, the new science center opening up, just all the little things that happen on the hill to make it home. after thinking of this, i realized that i wouldn't have a place to call 'home', or be returning 'home' for five months. at least in all my traveling around the states i've still been in the u.s.a., still been able to enjoy american food or a phone call home. but on the other side of the world?! what am i getting myself into?!

and so, logically, i started adressing the issue of what is home? is it the address on your driver's license? where your bills are sent or where you are registered to vote? i don't think it's any of these. i think home is a place where you have a vested interest in your community. in being able to spend one month each in four of the seven countries i'm going to visit, i feel that i will be able to immerse myself in the culture and learn about it from an entirely different perspective than a 'tourist'. in fact, i can basically guarantee that i will come to dismiss american tourists - simply because they are they for their own selfish-gain, without taking the time to learn about a culture with an open mind and allow their opinions to be changed. i think after the expierence, i will look back and recognize that of the seven countries i experienced, i visited three of them, but lived in four.