Ready to Take Off!

It’s finally here and it still seems surreal to me. It was just a few months ago that I received a vague and strange e-mail from the father of a friend saying I should apply for program through Rotary International. Confused, I checked out the website and thought this exchange program was too good to be true. Who in the world pays to send you to a super awesome country to learn more about your job and the culture there? I was pretty sure I had been spammed and it was some sort of scam. Thank you Blake Barker for following up with me and making sure I actually read it rather than deleting it.

So I went ahead and turned the application. Less than a week later I was standing with five other people in the living room of a Rotarian member waiting to be interviewed for a program I was not entirely sure about. In an effort to keep us from getting an upper hand in the interview process we were “secluded” from the interviewers. Little did they know that none of us really knew what we were getting into and thus would not have known how to get an upper hand in the process anyway. I could not have been more unprepared, so I just went with it and hoped that I would be considered. After being interviewed and hearing more about the program I started to get even more excited about this possibility. Once I began to get to know the other interviewees and got to hear stories about other GSE teams I found myself really, really, really, really, really (did I put enough reallys?) wanting to be selected. Little did I know that I would hear immediately I was on the team! It was surreal. I am going to Melbourne, Australia for a month!

So, several months later, here I am. Stressing over letting go of all the things I have my hands in and trying to prepare myself to live in the moment and take all of this in.  Just a few hours until I will be starting the first leg of this 26 hour journey to the land down under! I will do my best to keep everyone updated on this incredible experience through this blog! However, if you have had the chance to look at my itinerary for the next 30 days then you know that it looks like I will be constantly on the go. I will do my best! Until then, feel free to listen to Men at Work’s Land Down Under and think of me and this amazing adventure. Is it wrong that I have had this on repeat and have been listening to it non-stop all morning?