Umm...that's what she said.

Someone, who happens to be right more than I would like to admit, once said that saying goodbye when moving far away is a lot like dying. Not in the morbid "let's all mourn my decaying body" kind of way, but more in the "I'm going somewhere you can't really picture and I may or may not ever see you again," kind of way. In the end this makes it extremely hard to say, well anything all. There's so much to express, so many people I want to take with me, but at the same time I am ridiculously excited to do this adventure all on my own.

So we have our wakes in the form of walking dogs, happy hours, working through fire drills, sitting in an empty house until all hours of the night, shopping, driving and avoiding the hard goodbyes. Hopefully through this blog you will be able to get some sort of insight into life in Mali so that it's less like I'm dying and more like I'm on an extended vacation, paid for by your tax dollars. So thank you in advance and I hope I live up to the expectations and to do wonderful things in Mali. If nothing else, let's hope they think I'm a little bit funny and entertaining.

Wish me luck this is going to be hard to pull off....

See you soon!