My 12-VIII volunteer visa was approved today. I picked it up from the Ecuadorian consulate in San Francisco today, with it's shiny holographic stickers and stamped seals indicating I have a legal pass to live the next two years of my life in Ecuador. I doubt I'll stay two years, because reality, student loans, and the job market wait for me on the homefront, but I am rapidly preparing myself for perhaps the biggest and most significant moves of my life. I've always gone to Ecuador, it's kind of become "what I do," but this time, I'm going on my own terms, totally on my own, and I will have to survive. This is both exhilirating and mortifying. I've always had the security deadline of coming back home to start school in the fall, but this time my life to come back to resides on the Equator.
It's been an interesting process trying to deal with student loans, navigating health insurance policy changes (and what type of coverage I will get down there), and trying to figure out how much money I will be living off of for the next year. Most of my expenses will be paid by the organization I'm working with, but everything else is coming out of my pocket (savings). It's a gamble. I'm taking this experience because I know it will ultimately provide me with the direction and experience I need to keep pursuing my passion for being a conscious and active human being in the fight for global health equality. I'm leaving in less than a week from now and I already feel that I am a completely different person from who I was the last time I was about to leave for a two month trip to Ecuador. Ecuador, it's people, and the many life-altering, beautiful, and intense experiences I've had over the years has left a permanent and lasting mark on who I am. I physically carry a little bit of Ecuador with me wherever I go, within my body and my heart. I am getting an overwhelming feeling that this trip will provide simultaneous senses of completion and beginning; helping me to come full circle on all of the ways it has shaped me in the past in order for me to make new and big things happen.
I feel as if I am placing life at home in the US and the Bay Area into a little box, tying it up, and putting it on a shelf for awhile. I might get to open it up and share its contents, but for the most part, it is on hold. There is another one waiting to be filled in Ecuador, so that I can bring it back home with me to share with others.
