Well I'm leaving for the airport to fly to DC at six in the morning tomorrow. I just finished wrangling my suitcase closed and now I just need to cross my fingers that they won't mind it's a couple of pounds overweight. I also realized very late tonight that there was no way that my little laptop backpack was going to be big enough to carry all the stuff I needed to fit into my carry on. Luckily mom has a little suitcase I can use and hopefully my laptop backpack is small enough to count as a personal item.

I seriously don't know how anybody does this. I only packed about half as much as I wanted to and I've barely managed to fit it. I'm probably going to sprain about half my body trying to drag it all behind me, by hiking backpack weight forty pounds and sticks out about two feet behind me. Plus when I add all the weight together my baggage and I weight almost exactly the same amount. Watching me hobble through the airport with it should be a fairly amusing sight.

Tomorrow is my birthday, a fact that I keep forgetting. Usually during May I get excited about it coming up, but this year all I've really been thinking about is getting all of my stuff ready for my departure date. My flight from Sea-Tac to DC for staging leaves around 8am on the 11th and I fly out of the country on the 14th so that's pretty much the only thing I'm thinking about lately.

The cool thing about tomorrow is that it's payday and Mom and I are both getting our camp money. Earlier this month I was hired on as a substitute EA for camp Cispus and went up there to help with the 5th graders. So we'll both have money which means it's time to do all the final shopping for things to take with me. Anyway by this point I'm jittery/excited enough that It's hard to even sit down for very long. I have a feeling I'm going to be a complete basket case for most of June.

In anticipation of all the stuff I was going to have to pack up I scored some nice boxes when I helped with the elementary school book fair. Then Dad brought some home from work, so for the last couple of weeks I've had a five foot tall four foot wide wall of boxes set up in my room. Yesterday I finally got sick of having to chase the cat around it in circles every morning when I get up to let her out. She seems to think they were put there just so that she can play this special new game with me when I just want another hour of sleep.

I started out thinking I'd just box up some of my books and ended up going into crazy cleaning mode for about five hours. So pretty much all of my stuff is boxed up now and all of my muscles are sore. The only stuff out now is what I use daily and about half of my clothing, most of which is getting donated unless it's something Mom wants.

It's really bizarre to look at how empty my room is now and then look at how small a space in the closet it all takes up once it's been put in boxes. I was originally going to wait till later this month to pack, but I needed to clean anyway so it made sense to just box stuff up as a tidied. I figure it's probably good to put it away now so I can get used to not having it around while it's still semi-accessible. I figure if I feel like I need something badly enough to go digging through everything once it's packed then I should probably just take it with me.

I received my official invitation to the Peace Corps today, so now I have to respond and send in five million forms and I'm good to go. I'll be leaving for staging around June 12th and will be leaving for Georgia around the 15th. I've been assigned to a Secondary Education/English Teaching position so I'll be working with 9-17 year olds.