Today is the Day! (Sort of...)

Today marks the beginning of the 10 day countdown to my departure date. It all still seems so surreal to me and I don't think it will feel real until the plane touches down in Africa.  I will be in South Africa for approximately 11 months and will spend half of the time in Pietermaritzburg and the other half in Durban, both of which are on the eastern coast of South Africa. I will also have a nice, few month summer break in between destinations for various travels.   

My preparation for departure has included a faux-packing session to keep me from becoming too stressed the night before, loading up my new pre-birthday Nook from my mom for all of my reading essentials, brushing up on some South African culture via the book Culture Shock, working in my mom's office to help nurse my bank account, a family farewell party put on by my dad and Kris, visiting those restaurants and places I will miss, and making sure that I maximize my time with my family and close friends. 

I was told that keeping a blog would help me adjust to all the changes travel may bring and help aid with culture shock. It could also be a means of communication to a broader scope of people and family who may be interested in keeping up with my time abroad. 

A website called BootsNAll.com, introduced to me by my stepdad Scott, suggested that if a traveler was to keep a blog, he or she should write at least one post before they depart to help get comfortable with the format and the idea of putting something out there to share. I discussed with my mom that this may be a difficult task for me because I am such a perfectionist writer and it may take me a very long time to come up with a finished post. I'm sure that it will become easier as soon as I have something more interesting to write about. I also hope to follow my sister Candace's advice about maintaining regular posts at regular intervals.

When I created this blog during a lunch hour at work, I was stumped to come up with a creative name because I am just not good at that sort of thing. So I turned to a couple of people who I thought would be able to help me out. Chad from work and Scott both submitted 4 titles a piece and my mom's office voted on which title they thought was best. Though Scott won by a small landslide, it was deemed that, although very clever, it was not 100% suitable. So, Sunscreen for Hippos came to be, courtesy of Chad. So, congratulations Chad!

I can't believe that I am 10 days away from the adventure of a lifetime.
So for now,
Signing off!

-E