Well, early Sunday I’ll be boarding an Amtrak train to Philadelphia where I’ll spend two days filling out forms and getting tons of information thrown at me. Then me and the 60 others in my group will file onto a bus which will take us to JFK airport in New York City. We’ll make our way onto a Delta airliner and take off for Istanbul, Turkey. Once we arrive, we’ll hang out at the airport for a few hours, then get on a Turkish Airways redeye to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Once we get there, at this point, I have no idea what will happen.

As you can imagine, this is a nervous time for me. I’m wondering who the others in my group will be, where exactaly in Uzbekistan I’ll be placed, what my host family will be like, and tons of other more minor worries. But I’m not worried that I am worried. My high school swimming coach, for whom I have great respect, said, “It’s normal to have butterflies in your stomach, but you’ve got to make them fly in formation.” So I’m gonna go on that advice and be nervous, but be in control.

Tonight I went to see Foreign Aids at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. It was a truly great one man show. The guy is a South African performer who does costumes and personas (many of which are female.) He would morph from one to the other brilliantly. The common theme was the AIDS epidemic that is ravaging his country and the fact that the government is not addressing the issue. He told us (between the fanciful stories of his sophisticate alter egos) of how he goes to school across the country teaching about AIDS by talking about sex. It was funny, and he obviously made his presentations to the kids funny, but you could tell there was a great urgency to his message… safe sex or death. Using the themes of ignorance, timidity and fear, he cleverly connects his country’s reluctance to deal with Apartheid as similar to this current crisis. I’ve always thought it takes a very talented person to do a one man show well, so this was quite a treat.

I’ll be packing like a madman tomorrow – currently I have my stuff all over the place. But I think I have everything I need. BTW, I have a new photo gallery, and you may soon see some posts by a guest author. Plenty of surprises in the pipe although WD will be halfway around the world. I hope to keep everyone informed of both the humorous and maddening aspects of my journey, and provide plenty of photos providing I can get a decent internet connection every now and then.

So off off to Uzbekistan – off to a new challenge – and hopefully a great new chapter in my life.