Pre-Departure

So after waiting for the last week and counting down the days till the move to greece i’m finally here!!!!! Its so weird to think that i’ve been waiting for this day for over 3 months and now…..boom…..its here and i’m writing from Thessaloniki. i remember just a few days ago, literarily probably friday when i started packing. i just waited till the last minute because i’m one of those people who can be packed and ready to go as soon as possible. So thats how i went into packing. Except, as i started packing i realized that this was going to be harder than i thought. Imagine packing for three seasons, 3 months in one 50 pound bag. Yeah………….that wasn’t going to happen. I added a second bag and was willing to pay the extra $50 for it. Now the tough choice was narrowing down what clothes i really needed and what clothes were completely unnecessary.

2 Hours later my room was a mess. I had clothes all over my bed, all over my floor, in my luggage. Just everywhere. It looked like an explosion of clothes. And my sister was there to help me pack but all she was comment from the kinda safety of my bed. I’d hold up clothes to her to ask if they were good options for greece and most times it was no or what are you thinking and the occasional yes. Ii just kept packing more and more stuff into my bags and hoping that when i weighed them they would both be under 50 pounds. No such luck. I weighed both bags and i was at 52 and 56 pounds. Next day i repacked, took some clothes out, added some toiletries, food and now its was 54 pounds and 56 pounds!!! So i took everything out of the bags again and repacked, removed and reweighed. Verdict: 52 and 58 pounds. I quit after that. Nothing i was doing worked and i knew they were definitely more than what i weighed them because my scale was not accurate.

Sunday September 12 arrived and it was kind of bittersweet. I woke up feeling like it was just another normal sunday morning but my luggage on the floor of my room gave lie to that feeling. Then my mom came home, i grabbed my last few items, including a series of pictures with my sister which were sooooo cute. Then we prayed. Its been a while since we’ve done that as a family and i forgot how much prayer can make ever thing better. For those few moments everything seemed to be in God’s hands and all my worries seemed to disappear. So i’ve put every aspect of my stay in Greece into his hands and i know it’ll be okay. Next thing i know we got to the airport, and i was immediately put to work while my family was hanging around. I started meeting some of the students and their parents and things were moving fast.

Then i had to say good bye and it was fine saying bye to my parents but saying bye to my sister almost made me cry. I gave her a hug and its was done. Then students started saying bye to the families and there was this girl saying bye to her sister and they were both crying. Ironically enough i had to turn away from that image because i almost started crying watching them. Figures with me that i don’t cry when i’m saying bye to my sister but someone else doing that can move me to tears. lol. i’m such a mess. Then my last minute visitors arrived and the real test of goodbye came because about 15 minutes after they arrived i was told we were moving to the gate. We didn’t even get a chance to talk and laugh some more and poke fun at each other before i had to leave. I got my last hugs in and just turned away before i did that oh so female reaction of crying. We boarded and then we were off. The adventure to Greece had begun.