Pre-Departure: Stress

Today it hit me as I was eating breakfast that I only have a week left in the Vermont/US until May. Annnnnnnnnd I still have a lot to do. While I have gotten a good chunk of my mile-long list done, I still have to make some phone calls, get some shopping done, including buying gifts for my host families, finish getting organized at home/pack, and keep chugging through my pre-semester reading. This semester we're required to read Long Walk to Freedom: the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela and I Write What I Like by Steve Biko. So far I'm about 130 pages into Mandela's autobiography (out of a staggering 625 pages!) and really enjoying it. I honestly don't know much more than the basics about both Mandela and apartheid so the book has been very enlightening. It's a little slow-going now that the policies of apartheid have been implemented because Mandela takes the time to go over every detail of what the various resistance groups attempted to do and his thoughts on all these events, but I'm getting through it. I'm feeling a little over-whelmed at the moment but I know all of this has to get done, especially since I'm spending Friday-Sunday up at SMC, so I guess it's time to get to work. 

My motivation for today is Alicia Key's "Girl on Fire" because this girl needs to light a fire under her feet and get going!