One last goodbye

I am feeling all kinds of emotions as I get ready to leave on my RTW (round-the-world) trip.  My flight leaves at 1:30 am tomorrow May 9th; which means I have to be at the airport tonight, May 8th at 10:30 pm.  I am super excited but a bit anxious and nervous at the same time.  I guess it’s normal when I am about to change my life style completely and travel around the world on my own.  The two weeks that I took off between the time I quit my job on April 24th and now, have helped me get a taste of a calmer and slower life.

In order to enjoy my solo-traveling, I will definitely need to learn to be patient and welcome a lot of down time.  My good friend Eric reminded me yesterday… “With travels there will be many highs and lows. Good and bad things will happen. You will meet inspiring people and a$$holes along the way. You will taste new foods and miss staples that you are used to.  You will try new things but miss some of your routines.  Pace yourself, be patient, and write, and read during your travels”.  Great comments from my very wise friend who traveled around SE Asia a while back.

A lot of my friends have been super supportive in helping me get ready for this trip.  Just this week, I learned about saving a portable browser on a USB thumb drive to access the internet from public computers (for when I don’t have my laptop) to protect myself against hackers.  I also received some great advise on how to pack my backpack smarter.  I ended up taking a lot of clothes out of my pack that I realized I won’t need.  I am good at stuffing a lot into a small bag but that doesn’t make me a good packer.  It turns out that packing for long-term travel is not as easy as I thought.  My sister also made me realize that my carry-on pack was not going to be accepted as carry-on looking as fat as it did.  A big thanks to my sister Alejandra and my good friends Eric and Alan for helping me with the last minute packing and technical details!  you gave me a lot of peace of mind right when I needed it the most.

I will need to keep an open mind at all times and be very patient with myself as I try to adjust to a new way of life.  This RTW trip will be like a personal courage-and-patience experiment and a major challenge.  But I am sooo ready for this!  Or… am I?!  yikes!  I guess I won’t know how ready I am until I am actually doing it so here we go!!!

Yesterday some of my close friends invited me out to dinner for one last goodbye.  They took me to this really nice place in the San Fernando Valley called Epic Bar & Lounge.  The events Manager at the place was a nice lady from Puerto Rico; which turned to be a great coincidence since all of my friends were Puerto Rican.  This lady was full of life, super nice, and energetic, just like all of my Boricua friends.  She looked at me and asked if I was single and I said yes.  Then she said (in Spanish) “…well not for long honey, you are going to meet the love of your life during your travels”.  A bit later she explained how she could see that this man has very dark hair… I nervously laughed and asked her if she was a fortune teller and she said “yes, something like that”.  Well, if this prediction is true, it will come at a good time, considering that I have failed to make a couple of my past relationships work because I did not want to let anyone or anything get in the way of this trip.  Anyway, true or not, some of us Colombians always get a kick out of getting our fortune told!  ha ha!

Alright!  so it is time to say one last goodbye.  Next time I write, I will be in Indonesia.  Wish me luck on my long, long, long flight across the Pacific.