Before

2 days. To be specific, 48 hours and 34 minutes until my flight leaves for a country that I have never been to, never experienced, and don't know what to expect from. I've spent the past few days trying to cram everything I can about India and education into my head. But documentaries, books, and anecdotes from family friends who have backpacked through slums, I am sure, cannot prepare me for what I will see the moment I step of the plane, what I will hear the instant I step through the classroom door, or what I will smell in the worlds-apart slum and Cathedral School family kitchen. At this moment, India is a new world, and I stand excitedly on its threshold. In just a few days, I hope to become immersed, to shed, even if for a moment, the world of bell towers and dorm rooms and western food and exchange it for a world filled to the utmost with new ideas and incredible contradictions that I think might be India. I have never been more simultaneously anxious and confused as I am now. Will I be able to communicate with the kids whose lives I hope to, in some small way, improve? Will I be able to create a project that will, in a miniscule manner, create lasting change in an education system that so direly needs and deserves it? And perhaps, more practically, will I get sick?

But more than anything, I know this: I cannot wait.

Thanks,

matt