Nine days until I leave (next Wednesday, the 22nd) - five until I'm set apart as a missionary (this Sunday) - I have my itinerary and missionary tag now, which I received in the mail!
It really is down to the "Final Countdown" now... not to mention this song is amazing. As is their hair. This song kind of encapsulates a small part of how I feel right now about my mission - I hope to be able to teach,speak Tagalog, etc. as well as that one guy can shred on the guitar.
I've been getting a lot of stuff in order (naturally, with the help of my ever ready mother) and the packing has begun. The flight itinerary has me a little nervous, because this is the shakedown:
From Dulles
To Detroit
To Nagoya, Japan
To Manila
Total time in the air (I believe this is excluding one couple hour layover) = 23 hours.
So yeah... pretty exciting, but a lot of flying. It's good that we'll get there on Thursday and they're giving us a day to recover and try and reset our sleep schedules before we actually start missionary classes and training at the Missionary Training Center in Manila on Friday.
I recently learned how to say the equivalent of "Good morning" and "Good night" in Tagalog - Magandang umaga and magandang hapon respectively. I know a smattering of other words (including the most important one - pusa, or cat) but hopefully my ability to learn the language increases as I'm immersed in it.
I just got super distracted by my cat trying to attack something through the screen - I looked out and it was an adorable baby opossum walking right outside our back door. It opened its mouth and looked pretty mad about that, but didn't play dead. I'll be straight, I think opossums are super cute, especially the babies. Maybe it's just my fascination with small furry things, but I'll miss opossums in the Philippines - over there, it will be actual cat sized rats (no joke.) Here's a baby opossum, and you can judge for yourself if they're cute or not. Off topic, but relevant to my interests.
On the bright side, they do have adorable little tarsiers over there, as seen below.
I believe that's all the extremely relevant (and not so relevant) news I have. The closer the time to leave gets, I feel less nervous and more excited to serve the people of the Philippines I am. It's certainly going to be a huge change in my life, but I know that as I trust in the Lord I'll be able to overcome the challenges I will face as a missionary.
I will post up my address in the MTC and mission field on Facebook (and on here) this Friday or Saturday. I do hope that people will write me letters while I'm gone! I hope that as I leave this blog to the hands of my mom to update with emails I'll be sending home on my mission, that they will serve to entertain you somewhat and inspire you moreso.
And finally - just in case you all thought that going on a mission is going to make me a "square" automatically, I wanted to share this last parting thought. Although I've been listening to pretty much exclusively Mo-Tab and soft music in prep for my mission, I was notified that my favorite band, Family Force 5, recently came out with a new music video and song. They're "Christian Southern Crunk Rock" so you won't find any cussing or inappropriate stuff in there - just awesome beats and having fun with dancing and chainsaws. When you've heard me refer to the term "krumping" as my favorite dance form, that's what they're doing in this video when they look a little bit like they're having seizures standing up.
And with that - Kailangan ko nang umalis (I have to go!) I hope your week involves only as many dancing chainsaw weilding lumberjacks as you want it to.
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