17 Days.

Oh My.

I have 17 days until I leave for the Kyrgyz Republic. 2 words come to mind: holy cow! Where did my three months go? My "three months to get everything finished." My "three months to spend time with everyone I care about." My "three months to mentally prepare myself for the terrifying ordeal that I am willfully undertaking." What was I thinking? Three months is SO not enough time for all of this! But, ready or not... in 17 days I'll be in Philly getting ready to fly to KR for the next 27 months. *crosses fingers* Here goes nothing!

The to-do list is gradually getting shorter, the bags are gradually getting fuller, good-byes are still not being talked about.

It has been a busy couple of days. My Nana (also known as THE Nana) has spent the last two weeks with me, just visitng and bonding since I haven't gotten to see her in a while and won't see her for quite a long time. Saturday, my family threw me a big surprise party with most of my family and a lot of great family friends that have known me since I was a baby. It was great to get to see all of them. After the party I spent the night with my cousin and his family (who all are awesome) We ended up staying up all night (I hate Daylight Savings Time-btw) and had some really great conversation. Only seeing my family once or twice a year for the past 15 years and then seeing them multiple times the past few months made me realize how much I don't know about all of them, but I'm making a sincere effort to get closer to them. I'm also trying really hard to stay in contact with my friends. I am so blessed to have the quantity and quality of friends that I have The next two years will be hard on all of my friendships- old and new, but after moving so many times, I've finally learned that you have to work hard to stay in contact with the ones that you care about. So y'all- be prepared to be mail-box-blasted.

I'm leaving on Friday to go to Chicago with Mom and Dad. :-) Super Exciting! Mom has to go for the whole week, so we're going up early. Dad is coming up just for the weekend and flying back on Sunday for work. None of us have done the Chicago tourist stuff, so it should be a fun family weekend. Mom has been travelling a lot for work because she has to learn her new area, so the whole week she's in Chicago, I'm gonna travel with her and we can have some quality time together before I leave. Then I only have ONE WEEK LEFT!!! Which means I want to have all of my stuff ready to go before I leave. Let's see how well that works out...

I am still working on narrowing down my packed stuff. Comparing my packing list to everyone elses.... I still feel like i'm taking twice as much as everyone else. I didn't think I was so materialistic.... but apparently so. I'm gonna post the packing list when i'm done packing it... hopefully tomorrow. It's my last full day with The Nana so we'll see how much I get done...

I'll keep y'all up to date!

Love from KY,
Jess