Well here goes. I’ve never been much of a journal keeper, much less a blog writer. My diaries in elementary school consisted of entries for a whopping three consecutive days, usually about how much my sisters annoyed me, and then I would give up and start up again the next year. I attempted to keep a journal in Spain to no avail. I wrote in it, you guessed it, the first three days in January, and wrote it in once more in April only because my Internet was broken. As I am required to keep a travel journal for class, hopefully this won’t suffer the same fate as my previous journals.

Today marks my last day in USA (pronounced phonetically – “oooosa”) and I’m pretty pumped for the next two months. I will spend one month doing a study abroad program with OU that visits Lima, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and the Amazon rain forest. When that is finished I will fly to Piura to do mission work with Santísimo Sacramento church.

Now for some anticipated clouds and sunshines of the trip:

Sunshines:

1) Speak some ‘spañol. (You can’t imagine home depressing it is to turn on the Spanish Channel and not understand a word despite a (4.0) Spanish minor under my belt, living in Spain for 6 months, and, of course, studying Spanish consistently since the first grade).

2) See my Peruvian family!!!!!

3) FINALLY visit Machu Picchu!!

4) Have a decent blog that’s up to Katherine Giles’s standards

Clouds:

1) The plane will go down LOST-style. However, if I’m sitting next to a Jack Shephard look-alike, this might result in more of a sunshine.

2) I will acquire some sort of parasite/get really sick/suffer from a sever case of malaria.

3) I will look like a les in my hiking boots (that’s not a fear, that’s a reality)

4) New people/new situations will inevitably bring out my inherent awkwardness in full force

I'll let you know how these hopes and dreams/fears and anxieties play out...