I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again…

Literally, don’t know when I’ll be back again. Or where I’m going for that matter. I’m writing this sitting in a hostel room in NYC the night before we fly out to Johannesburg, two bags weighing half my weight by my side encompassing my entire world for the next year or so. I’ve traveled before but never as off the cuff, in as developing and foreign a land, and for as long a period of time as I’m about to. It’s exciting but a little worrisome. Will the other backpackers know I’m a fake?

The fact is that tomorrow I am supposed to be flying to Johannesburg and after an 8 hour layover moving on to Windhoek, Namibia where I should be continuing on my way to my project in Onambelela. But as of today Brian and I’s visa’s are somewhere in Namibia in the land of ‘pending’, meaning we have no idea when we will get them. So this past week we had a decision to make – to push back our flight and wait for our visas in snowy Massachusetts or to fly to Johannesburg, push back the second leg of our flight and wait for our visas in sunny South Africa. Guess which one we chose.

The exciting part is that in effect we are going on holiday! It’s taken away a lot of the stress associated with starting our project right away, since going on holiday is something I am pretty good at. But because we essentially decided yesterday that once in Johannesburg we will cross over into Mozambique with two of our teammates and travel around there (it is much cheaper in Mozambique than South Africa) we are traveling, as I mentioned before, a little off the cuff. Actually for me a LOT off the cuff (no research!). I am not the most go with the flow kind of girl but I am using this as a learning curve for the year ahead. How convincing does that sound?

So that is the plan as of now. With any luck, come Thursday morning you can picture me in Maputo, Mozambique. Hopefully in the next week or two I will get to see Maputo, see some of the amazing beaches Mozambique is supposed to have, and maybe even meet some DI’s at their projects. And if I’m really lucky I will get to cross off one of my ‘bucket lists’ – swimming with turtles! I will try to update and post pictures as much as possible, depending on internet access. As of today we are planning on postponing our trip to Namibia for one month – who knows what that month will hold!