And so it begins.

I've joined the Peace Corps.

For the next two years, I will be teaching English to eleven- to eighteen-year-olds in Moldova. (Moldova is in Eastern Europe, next to Ukraine. I didn't know where it was until about six months ago.) I will teach one class on my own and team teach several other classes with a Moldovan English teacher. I will also conduct English teaching workshops and engage in or initiate secondary projects such as after school clubs and summer camps. All the while, I will be immersed in Moldovan culture and working to accomplish the Peace Corps' goal of fostering international understanding and cooperation.

Tomorrow, I depart for Philadelphia for Staging, where I will meet my fellow Volunteers (there are about seventy of us) and attend a "brief, yet intense" orientation. From there, we will take a bus to New York and fly out of JFK. We will spend our first few days in Moldova in a hotel in the capital, Chisinau. For the rest of out ten-week Pre-Service Training, we will live with Moldovan host families. Training will consist of intensive language classes (I will be studying either Romanian or Russian), technical training, cross-cultural training, and lessons about health and safety. As an English Education Volunteer, I will also do a three-week practicum with Moldovan students.

My bags are packed -- I finished packing with over forty-eight hours to spare! (At this time, I advise that you take a second to consider whether reading this blog is how you wish to spend your last moments before the apocalypse.) I was hoping that, at this point, I would have something profound to say about my expectations, goals, or feelings, but I don't. The truth is that I have no idea what will happen when I step off that plane in Chisinau on Thursday. Yes, I have an itinerary; I know when I will sleep, when I will eat, and when I will have class, but everything else remains a mystery. Not a bad mystery, but one that makes me think of a phrase echoed throughout my childhood on the days when my family would pile in the car and embark on magnificent journeys to wondrous destinations: Civil War battlefields, the Grand Canyon, Home Depot. As we backed out of the driveway, Dad would make his familiar proclamation. Once those magical seven words left his lips, anything was possible. So as I set off on an experience that I'm told will be full of joy, frustration, learning, and embarrassing stories in miscommunication, there is only one thing I know for certain, one phrase which both excites and steadies me:

These are the days of high adventure.