Chug chug chugging along

It hasn't actually been that long since I got my invitation, but it feels like forever. I think about my upcoming departure all the time. I've been shopping a lot, preparing things, thinking about what to take, what not to take, studying up on my Portuguese...

I'm slowly wading through all the paperwork. I think I have the passport and visa issues sorted out. I don't have work on Monday, so I am going to call my bank/insurance carrier and schedule my car to go into storage mode, let them know I'm going to be in Africa, etc. I am also setting up things like a power of attorney, trying to figure out absentee ballot information, and generally preparing to be gone for two years. It's a complicated process. I'm just glad I don't have any debt to worry about.

One thing that I'm excited about is learning the local dialect, whatever that may be. From what I learned from my research, most Mozambicans speak some form of a Bantu language -- which is great, because I did some research on a related language of Kenya, Kimeru, during Linguistic Field Methods senior year and from what I could gleam from the vocab lists of some of Moz's langauges, there are a lot of cognates. I hope I can a) learn the local dialect where I am and b) do some linguistic research on it. I am not taking a lot of books with me, but I am taking my fieldwork guide as well as my syntax and phonetics books. And of course, a Portuguese-English dictionary and my pocket grammar reference for Portuguese.

I've found the MOZ19 group on Facebook, so I've been talking quite a bit with people who I will be serving with as well as people already over there, and I can tell I am going to like these people. I also happened upon a few of them on Reddit, so... that's cool too. I have found my brethren.

My biggest project right now: Downloading lots of TV shows and movies to my computer so I can take them with me. I hear there's a thirst for new media, so I am doing my best with my not-so-large hard drive to take as much as possible. I am sure that when I've been there for a while, I will be begging the new volunteers to bring my my favorites (Season 2 of Legend of Korra, for example..)

Well, that's it for now. As soon as Monday rolls around I will continue my onslaught of preparations -- including begging my dentist to do my pre-service dental exam pro-bono, since I don't really have a great deal of moolah at the moment. We'll see. If he does, I will give him a shout-out in my blog.