And....then...it's WINTER 2006!

Strange to think that at this very time last year, I was heading to O'Hare to board a plane to Ecuador with 7 (almost) strangers. It was surely a whirlwind....getting a call the week before fall break to trying to cram insurance, plane ticket buying, vaccinations, pills, and packing into a month on top of final exams. I never thought that one year later, I'd be heading off to...

GMALA!

All I've heard is about Lake Atitlan, the volcano, Father Greg, Tono, lakes, kids, ceremonies, and monkeys for a year. It's a crazy image in my mind...I mean, try to fit all those into one image in your head. There's a monkey climbing a volcano above a beautiful lake with kids and llamas everywhere.

So I don't really know what I'm writing, but when Miriam mentioned the I-i blog, her face just lit up with excitement, almost as if you had just given her a new bunny. She made me promise to write, so here I am...writing away.

Funny because I just read her post from this past summer, where she said "I always think, it'd be so much EASIER to just stay home...and then next thing I know, I find myself boarding a plane...". That's how I feel now. I've never gone home for an entire break in my entire college experience, and I wonder how it'd be. Probably boring and frustrating, but there's that ideal situation of rolling out of bed at noon, working tons of hours so I can actually pay my college tuition, seeing people, lots of laughing. But Gmala, oh gmala, will be much better.

Here I sit with more shampoo, soap, medication, and hand sanitizer than I would know what to do with, but when you multiply me by 12 people, I can see how it will all vanish. Hopefully not the medication though.

Fumi and I have talked over and over again about how much we love our group. Each person has something great to contribute to the dynamic, and we think it'll be fabulous. Though, as Francis continually mentions to me, "we're just acquaintances still, not really yet friends". 17 days, I hope, will be a lifetime of memories that will produce an amazing friendship.

I call that "I-i Magic".

Good luck, Edor, we'll be thinking about you from good ol' Gmala. I know you'll have a fabulous time, and I would've loved to go back (yeah, I'm kind of jealous :)). Buy out the Otavalo market, you hear?

See you all on the other side of the volcano....
~Megan :)