January! (It’s the New September)
August 2nd, 2007
Ok, so. I’ve got a situation.
Looks like the September service program I had signed up for has been canceled, seeing as how I was the only person registered. I hemmed and hawed about it a few months back, wondering if I should take Global Volunteers up on their offer to send me solo, possibly with a staff member. I thought going alone might be its own unique experience. Then I got to thinking: I’m a pretty solitary person to begin with. Do I really need to go all the way to India for even more solitude?
Besides, I think a group dynamic is really important in these situations. You can feed off the other volunteers’ energy, meet some interesting characters and lean on each other when you need to. (We can call it The Real World: Chennai. Minus all the hot tubs and boozy shenanigans, of course. Is that show still on, by the way? Because I’ll tell ya, they lost me after that Chicago season, what with those freaky night vision cameras. And let’s be honest, it jumped the shark anyway after the original New York season.)
But I digress. Point is, after really thinking about what I wanted the experience to be, and after talking it through with the Global Volunteers staff, I decided to hold off a few months. I figure, why try to squeeze into something that doesn’t quite fit? I’m not rushing it just to say I went in September.
So, I’m going to bypass the rainy season and look to January. And good news, there are already a few volunteers signed up. No, it won’t coincide with my birthday month. But I’m cool with that and don’t think I need to be so precious about it. Like my sister said, I’ll still be 30 in January. It’ll be the new year. It’ll still be India. It’ll give me breathing room to settle in after my move this month and finish my fundraising. And I think it’ll be fantastic.
So to everyone who contributed: Don’t worry, I’m still going! I’ve got a special savings account that’s safely keeping all the funds raised. And it keeps rising, just as the little red bar here does. And you’ll notice it says we’re half-way there. (To think, I started this site with somewhere around 10 or 11 percent.)
Thanks everybody. And stay tuned. (Next up, a late August/early September garage sale in New Jersey).
