It's time...

Packed. Ready. And yes, I am bringing my towel.

...and I'm ready!

The goal over of the last few months was to get a DNA-level of understanding of this adventure, so that when I get south of the equator I can simply go with it and take in the opportunities.

I believe that people do the best they can with the tools they have.  The "tools" can include things like personal knowledge and skills, personality traits, money, access to information, support from family and friends, etc. 

And time.

I tend to take all the time I have when I work on anything - big or small.  I had two and a half months to get ready for this excursion, which was kind of short. I won't know for awhile if I could have done anything differently during the planning phase, but for now, I want to remember that the amount of time doesn't necessarily translate to being any more or less thoughtful about it.  Years are long -- there's more time to think of stuff, but there's more time to not think of stuff too.

The outstanding question is whether I can ever be ready for my brain to hurt in terms of hearing and speaking the Spanish. Because that's gonna happen!

So much time

"Make yourself useful. Get those things in a row."
-Veronica Mars

and so little to do!

Four months isn't that long a time for a sabbatical, in the end, but long enough that I had to think differently about details on the home front than I typically do for a vacation. Most systems accommodate 90 days pretty easily, so the additional 25 days I'm taking created more steps to take.

A To-Do List

Husband: do a knowledge transfer. Dan was joking about doing an "exit interview" the other day as he was asking about where I keep our accounts and password information, where my excursion info will be, and the practical stuff I do about various things for our life together.

One practical thing I do is be his emergency contact, so I also asked him to update that information with his employer. (That came up like this: Amanda: Who is going to be Dan's emergency contact? Me: What do you mean? For what? Amanda: For emergencies. Me: Ooooohhhhhhhh, right.)

Household: get the financial ducks in a row. In addition to figuring out how to afford this adventure in the first place, I opened a separate checking account for travel and wiring emergency money purposes (not attached at all to my real-life checking account), put travel notices on the cards I'm taking (which is only good for 60 days, so have to call and extend the notice in April), put a seasonal vacation suspend on my cell phone (which is only good for 90 days, so have to call and extend the suspension in May), and set up automatic payments for the credit card I am taking.

Health Care: get an Rx refill in another country. I'm allowed a 90-day refill. The plan is to find a local doctor and get a local prescription (availability confirmed). Backup options include: refilling through an international pharmacy company, or having Dan fill the prescription here and mail it to me. (Substantial duty may apply).

Career: take a personal leave of absence.  The actual steps to take were surprisingly simple (I wrote a memo to my boss. She forwarded it to her boss, and filled out an online form for HR), but the process (on my end, at least) involved re-articulating my professional goals (mainly for myself, for this excursion and in general), understanding the HR rules/union contract (and assessing the risks), preparing to leave certain projects mid-stream, and getting comfortable with my feelings about leaving, and asking for help.

Also, I asked for the leave before I had anything lined up (like, you know, a country to go to) so the process also involved taking a leap of faith.

On going solo*

Frequently asked question: "What about your husband...is he going with you?"

The short answer is no - mainly because he doesn't want to (he has never wanted to travel to South America, much less spend any significant amount of time there), and partly because this is my dream, and a learning experience I want to create for myself.

People are generally excited for me that I'm doing this, but we've both heard mixed reactions from our family and friends when they learn that I am doing this without him.  ("But...you're married."  "It will be nice to have a break from your marriage." "It's healthy for people in relationships to do things on their own." "Are you going to open up your marriage so you can have an affair?" "What are you going to do with your husband while you're gone?" "People do this. It's okay.")  I've gotten half-reactions and non-reactions, too, which may or may not have anything to do with thoughts about our not doing this together. My relationships with family and friends mean a great deal to me, and I really value the endorsements, the resistance, and the reactions in between. I don't live my life in a vacuum, and I love that our people are looking out for me, for him, and for our relationship.

Before I gave a green light to this adventure, Dan and I talked about how/if this would work for our lifestyle (can we afford this?), how/if this would work for our relationship (can we be apart for a few months? what happens to the relationship when one person experiences something totally different?), and how/if this would work for us as individuals (our life goals).  In short, my going to Chile for four months works for us. Dan will say that it's unreasonable for our passions to always be in alignment. I will say that I'm a bit uncomfortable that this adventure is rather Kat-centered, but is a LOT cheaper than my doing something like grad school.  And the only way we're going to find out that this new-ish type of thing does (or doesn't) work for us is to do it.

It is a bit of a paradigm shift for me, though.  It is true that our individual interests haven't always lined up, and we've always embraced that in our relationship. And yet - how we each spend our time on our individual pursuits has never looked anything at all like spending four months on different continents.  (This adventure isn't simply a bike ride to Saint Paul, after all!). Nobody in our circles (our siblings, our parents, our friends) do the "big things" without their partner, if they are partnered, so there isn't exactly a model for us to follow.  Yes, other couples do things like this, but since we don't know them I've had a little bit of a "one of these things is not like the other" thing going on.  In terms of our relationship, we say that four months will either a) fly by, and we will wonder what the fuss was about,

or b) what? Fill in the blank __________.

*Also, I'm not going solo. My friend Alicia and I are going together! How that came together is another story, and one that both of us are a little fuzzy on the details about.