Today is the day I leave for Jordan. I have a flight from SF to Chicago, a four hour layover, and an 11 hour flight to Amman. I name today the Day of Planes. 

Luckily (and miraculously), I fit everything I'm bringing in to a 45L pack and my purse. It'll make moving around a lot easier. And though people who have seen my perpetually messy room might not believe it, I hate being disorganized when traveling. Thus, I've attempted to pack very minimally. My one indulgence is a large bottle of conditioner to tame my curls. 

I only managed to forget one thing (I think): a non-digital book to read. As they read this many of my friends are hanging their heads in shame. Luckily, the airport had a large selection of books to choose from. I will be bringing a science fiction book call Blood's Pride, which I bought mostly because Brandon Sanderson seemed to like it.

It still doesn't feel real that I will be traveling and studying microfinance for a  whole year. I'm not sure it will actually feel real until I arrive. I'll let you know if it does when I land.

My awkward confession... is that I'm terrible at blogs. I tend to overthink blogs and spend hours antagonizing about every sentence. When writing I want to be simultaneously witty, laugh-out-loud funny, deep, and inspiring. This has led to several contrived and over-edited posts in the past. If I do that every time I wrote a post, I'd only only ever write one post... this one. So, my plan is to write a simple and bumbling blog that will only sometimes incite laughter (hopefully). 

I am writing this blog mostly to chronicle my Watson year from start to finish. The blog will mostly be composed of pictures, because I'm bad at social media. I will post on my blog more frequently that I post on Facebook. However, this is not a tall order because I post on Facebook maybe once a year (because let's be honest Facebook causes me social anxiety). Sometimes my posts will be very (very) short. Those ones will mostly be there to assure my mother that I am still alive. 

Now I will terminate my prologue. I hope you are intrigued enough to read the first chapter, which is coming soon ... 

... probably.