The Final Four

{{Por la tierra, por el cielo, busco un sentimiento nuevo}}

I now have fewer than four days left and am madly engaged in the favorite activity of all travelers: packing. Guillem's old room has become my packing station, with potential clothing and stuff that I may need--from work gloves to a Peru guidebook to malaria medicine to jeans to my passport to my camera (with its charger!)--strewn all about. I made myself an extremely detailed list of everything that I think I may need, some of which may still be skinnined down (since I don't want to look like the proverbial American female tourist who brought her entire wardrobe with her), but I still have the feeling that I'll end up in Peru and realize that I'm missing that one little thing that is now 5,000 miles away. But the world has gotten much smaller than I think most of us realize, and who knows, that little thing is probably sold in Urubamba too!

It is finally hitting me that I am actually leaving for Peru soon and I cannot wait. I'm so ready to dive off into the unknown, but I am quite nervous as well. These next days are going to pass me in a haze of packing and shopping and final tasks to wrap up around the house, but I am making a point to stop and enjoy the little things that make "my house" and "my family" and "my city". The bright pink roses that are still, somehow, blooming outside Guillem's old room. The sound of my parents' footsteps in the kitchen over my room every morning. The smell of old books with crinkled spines and lovingly-finger-worn pages at Powell's on Burnside. The taste of my peach black tea. The feeling of calluses growing as the metal strings on my violin indent my fingers. 

I will miss all of it, but next thing you know, I'll be getting used to the little things that will designate my life in Urubamba, and too soon as well, I will be missing those. 

So, I attempt to make sense of the clothing and stuff sprawled out across Guillem's old bed, thinking that I will soon become a part of another's family just as he became a part of ours.