24-ish hrs til departure

Well, dear friends, I have just decided that this is our photo-of-the-day; please notice the speechless nature of the pictured gentleman, for I am also quite speechless about this whole impending departure thing. Since I cannot really visualize what my life will be like in a week, I'm going to just briefly post about what life has been like these past few days. Great.

Last weekend my two older sisters were in Philadelphia for a final visit before I leave--they cleaned my apartment, held my hand as I bought so many things I never realized that I needed, cooked with me, liked Matt, and brought my beautiful perfect amazing nephew Liam along so that we could all revel in the extra baby-happiness that comes from watching him breathe. They also didn't mind that my water seldom works, there is little to no air conditioning to be found in my apartment, or the general lack of amenities (like cars) to which they are used. There will be nothing sappy in this post because I am currently too emotionally overloaded to even go there--but let me just say that I will most certainly miss the near-daily conversations I have with each of them.

I finished up my PennSound work on Wednesday, but of course it still feels like I will be in the office on Monday. It is truly impossible to convince the muscle memory created by two years of steady employment that it has suddenly become outdated and thus incorrect--especially when PennSound has been such a lovely part of my life and has afforded me such opportunity, to say nothing of how much I treasure my co-workers there! Thankfully I've been assured that my access to the servers will remain. . . so I can still change yr pages from the Africa. . . provided there is internet.

The last 3 days have been intensely packed with goodbyes and intense packing, I know a few people were interested in what I finally decided to bring, so here it is:

the books:
Paterson, collected Roethke, Celan, O'Hara, Valeria's Book, various poems that I just printed out, Marjery Kempe, Ivanhoe, Paradise Lost, East of Eden. And to all you academics that just died a little bit inside: Steinbeck is wonderful, get off your high horse and play. oh I also have a phrasebook and a guidebook. and 3 photo albums.

"sensible" things:

(this is so that I can look back and see what was actually sensible)
leatherman, solar panels, flashlight, rain jacket, expensive and unfly but very sturdy shoes, superdeduper lightweight sleeping bag, paper, pencils, cards, puzzles, thermos, nalgene, underarmour, extra ziplock bags, 1 million pounds of medicines, a first-aid book from my sister The Nurse, scissors, foodstuffs, and more.

I probably won't post again until I have something Malagasy to say. . . til then, be well, do good work, and stay in touch.

and write "air mail" on yr letters.