My nerves have been really getting to me. More than usual. I have no clue why. It's not like this is the first time I have traveled alone (second time), but I guess it is the first time I am traveling alone to someplace so far.
For those of you who don't know, today I am traveling to Hawaii for my Individualized Immersion to study ecologically conscious and sustainable living. I will be staying and volunteering at this eco-hostel called Hedonisia Hawaii.
Overall, of course I am pretty excited. I mean it looks unbelievable and I am sure it will be an excellent time. I just feel kind of in a funk. I guess it will all go away once I step off that plane and realize that I am actually in Hawaii.
During my stay I will be trying to keep up with this blog as part of my Immersion. (Hopefully I will get a knack for this and be more fluid in my writing (not so all over the place)). I know they have internet because part of my volunteering will be helping them with their website. Besides that I will be working on the garden and also helping build their eco-friendly program. I volunteer for about 3 hours a day and then I only have to pay $35 a week to stay there. Pretty nice deal. This was part of the reason why I decided to create my own Immersion rather than join one of the options the school gives. Though I would have enjoyed being in Peru with my friends, I decided I could create a more cost efficient Immersion (saving me $3000). Another reason I am doing this is because I kind of felt the need to isolate myself from my comfortable surroundings. Recently, at home, I have felt a bit out of place now and then. I constantly feel like I'm stumbling along life and I think I needed the time alone to ground myself before I continue on with whatever comes at me next.
To accompany me, I have some books and music.
The books all have sort of the same theme. As well as looking as this Immersion as some sort of "travel story", I like to look at it as a coming-of-age story as well. I picked Catcher In The Rye especially because it was one of the books we had to read Freshman year and I thought it would be kind of cool looking back and re-experiencing those thoughts I once had in a new way. I am debating which one I will start with... I'm leaning toward Into The Wild because that was one of the first ones I thought of taking with me when I created this Immersion. (Sure, it's cliche, but so is putting Jack Johnson on the iPod I'm borrowing before the trip.)
In fact, the title of this blog came from Into The Wild because I was with Rahul when creating it and I was at a loss when it came to what I would call it. What we decided to do was flip through the pages of the books I was bringing with me on the trip and randomly select a line. I found something on "unprepared and overconfident men" in Into The Wild and we both kind of digged the phrase. I thought it was a nice summary of myself going into this trip. so I named the blogged that.
As for music, Paige kindly lent me her old iPod nano which holds 4 gigs of music. Last year in New Zealand I had a 1 GB mp3 and I put all new albums on it. I really got a lot out of it. Panda Bear's album, Person Pitch was one of them and that really made my trip. This time I put some familiar music, but still kept with the same mindset as before. I also have 2 mix CDs from Paige and Will Burdick that should keep me occupied.
The two I think really compliment eachother in an odd way. Will's is really ambitious and pretty much consists of a bunch of songs I haven't heard while Paige's is kind of familiar and fun with all these songs that really have some nostalgia to them. It kind of goes perfect with the whole traveling/coming-of-age theme.
I also am really really excited to listen to this compilation titled Dark Was The Night. It's composed by the guys from The National and goes toward the benefit of AIDS research. I just heard it tonight on SiriusXMU and it blew me away. It seemed almost too perfect for this trip as every artist I was planning on putting on the nano (Beirut, Sufjan, Sigur Ros, Feist, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird) were all featured in this album and were all doing these amazing old folk covers. Recently I have been on this "let fate guide me" tip and this just seemed like it was totally made for this trip. I immediately downloaded it on iTunes and would recommend anyone give it a listen.
But. Now that I have 1 hour until I have to wake up, I should probably end this post. I doubt my others will be this lengthy, but I think I needed to write all this out. It definitely calmed me down a bit so I can see this blog being very beneficial during this trip. I'll be sure to post as soon as I can with a post that will probably start with something cheesey like Aloha! Until then!
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