The day before, April 30

Here I am sitting in the hotel the day before the lift off. Everyone is out getting some food and so that gives me a little time to reflect on the weeks to come.  Although I know that this trip has been successfully done before and that our days are well mapped out according to a tried and true schedule, I have to admit that I'm a little nervous about the unknown: the language, the accommodations, the workload and the potential issues that will inevitably arise and that we will have to deal with as a group.

These new adventures will result in some growth, both personal and professional.  After all, any new experience can not help but stretch us in some new way, even in unexpected ways.  My hope is that we will merge as a group and work together to solve our issues, work through the problems and celebrate the small victories we have throught the trip. Even misery can look like a fun life lesson given the passage of a little time....

Of course we will all miss the comforts of home: the love and affection of friends and family, the pleasures of the little luxuries we are so accustomed to, like hot showers, food we feel familiar with, comfortable temperatures and humidity and beds and water and and and.......

We will not return home unchanged in some way, even those of us who have been on this very trip in years past. That change remains to be discovered and examined in the weeks after we have returned home.  The reflective exercise will continue for some time as we glean the lessons from our experiences.....

OK, enough!  This is getting way too cerebral!!  Let's go and discover what life has in store for us and what we can bring to it!!