Ready or not, here I come...

 I am sitting in Seoul, South Korea.  I have been traveling for a bit of time now...since early morning Wednesday.  My eyes are tired, but they don't want to rest.  There is so much new to see, and take in.  I have spent the last four months getting medically examined, immunized, packing, eating plenty of snow cones, and saying goodbye.  

I don't think the idea of it all really even became real until after I was on my first plane...but this is it.  It is not a vacation.  I am not returning in 2-3 weeks.  It is real now.

The journey has begun with staging in Washington dc, where I got to meet the other 45 members of the Mongolian program leaving this year.   We come from all across the US, from Florida, Alaska, and all the places in between.  We discussed our worries, our aspirations, and those special items we have all stashed in our suitcases.  We started our physical journey at 4am, heading to the airport to begin time traveling.  We flew straight over the world, over Canada and northward, heading down over the snowy mountains of Russia to South Korea...not a bad way to spend your day, if you ask me.  If you do ask me however, I honestly have no clue what day it is, or even what time it is.  No one ever said time travel was easy!

I m about to board the plane to the new place I will call home, and I still don't even quite know what to expect, aside from more immunizations and paperwork of course.  Good thing I packed my optimism!

Where in the world?!

Well.  it is officially official.  My next huge adventure awaits, and it won't be waiting too much longer.  About 11 months ago, I submitted my application for the Peace Corps, and in February, I received the news that I was invited to serve in Mongolia.  MONGOLIA!

When I applied, I relished in the idea of going anywhere the Peace Corps thought I would be best suited for -- I had left my preference list open and I saw it as having the world at my finger tips - any place could be mine to explore, and I would be excited to go there.  And now...now, to finally have an invitation and a set destination is astonishing.  I have to say, of all the place I imagined going, Mongolia never happened to be one of them.  But since receiving the invitation, I have been doing my own research about the country, and learning about its incredible history.  This invitation has also gotten me connected to and introduced to so many new people who have told me their first hand experiences from Mongolia.   Here are just a couple general facts about my new home to be:

* Mongolia is the 2nd largest landlocked country in the world, a little larger than the state of Alaska

* Mongolia is the most sparely populated country in the world. Horses and sheep outnumber people.

* Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, has the lowest average temperature of any world capital (it averages below freezing for 8 months of the year).

* Mongolia is home to the Gobi desert -one of the coldest desert in the world, also where the first dinosaur eggs were found, and is home to the bactrian camel.

* The Mongolian death worm (the big foot tale of Mongolia) lives in the Gobi desert, and shoots acid and electric waves in order to kill anything approaching.  It's body mucus can also melt steel. 

No, I don't know where exactly I will be living yet when I get to Mongolia, but what I do know is that I will be a secondary English teacher after I complete my three months of training.  I cannot begin to describe how fortunate I feel about being able to have this opportunity to learn and experience while at the same time helping others to do the same.  It has been something that I have dreamed of doing since I was young, and here it is.  MONGOLIA!