“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” -Cesare Pavese

48 hours from now, I'll be halfway to Frankfurt, Germany for an 11 hour layover. Next stop, Johannesburg, South Africa. Final destination: Cape Town. And I haven't started packing.

I've been planning this trip since November of 2011, right around my 19th birthday. My first semester of college was coming to a close, and in my day-to-day routine and general unhappiness at the university I attend I was experiencing at the time, I was looking for ways to get OUT- and what better way to do it than to travel to the other side of the world? I love my university, and the freshman frustration I was feeling before winter break ebbed away after a few weeks of sleeping in (more importantly, sleeping at ALL), but the spark I felt the day I decided to apply for the study abroad program I'm traveling with has only grown stronger. Still, the idea that I'm leaving for the airport in a day and a half for a five week program of about 200 people- of whom I'm acquainted with three- is making me nervous. Nervous like clicking your way to the top of the roller coaster, somewhere between the point of wondering if your shouts to get off would be heard and the anxious-from-the-bottom-of-your-stomach itch to plummet towards the ground, just around the bend of the horizon, at 50 miles an hour, head first. That's kind of what this trip feels like, right now.

The program I'm traveling with is called Global LEAD, and it is a very cool program indeed. This is only the program's 4th year in existence- started by four University of Georgia graduates seeking a meaningful path for their lives by creating a non-profit program of life-changing experiences for students. (The website does the story better justice than I can, so I'll leave it at that.) Studying economics in Italy is not for me (though, admittedly, I dream daily about being able to study the art there, as an intended art history minor). What's different about this program- and what appealed to me- is that you aren't just sitting in a classroom day after day learning about something you probably could have learned back in school (or wherever you do your learning). It combines (I quote, from the website) "the service component of an international volunteer project, the adventure of a backpacking trip and the course credit of study abroad." We'll be taking two classes on leadership and service, learning about the history and culture of the region, and working with families in the District 6 slum. Experience isn't something that a textbook- or any book, or Pinterest, or even a friend's stories like the ones I intend on posting here- can give you. You need to seek it, make it, be it. Much like the Global LEAD slogan states: "Don't just go- LEAD."

I don't take it for granted for a second how lucky I am to have been given the opportunity to go on this trip. As a way to keep friends and family updated on life in Africa, and to help myself keep track of everything that'll be happening in the coming weeks, I'm going to try to post on here every so often. Phone calls are a no-go, as far as I know, but we should have pretty solid internet access where we're staying.

So, the clicking of my roller coaster is slowing like it always does before the fall. It seems like it won't end, but inevitably, it does. And it will, in a day and a half. I'm a chronic procrastinator, and this blog is really just a product of my putting off packing. So for the next few hours, it's me, a pile of way too much stuff from my dorm I've yet to put away, and Demetri Martin's comedy album "These Are Jokes." Or, much more likely... sleep.