The Beginning of the End.

Well, here I am. exactly 4 months to the day until my COS (Close of Service). Tomorrow our COS conference starts and they'll start giving us the run down on all the forms we have to fill out before we can leave, how to say good bye to our villages, and what to do next. So basically, I'm staring down the home stretch. Scary.

People keep asking me if I'm excited to be almost done. Apprehensive would be a better word i think. I'm absolutely ready to go home, but absolutely not ready to leave Niger.

Think of it this way: I've spent the last two years learning a completely foreign language, integrating into a completely different culture, and I'm going to leave now that I'm just getting the hang of it all?! How does that make sense. Especially when the upshot of my competence is that I finally feel like I could actually do some projects that might stick.

But I really do miss home. Yes I may sound like my priorities are skewed but I miss playing video games, and Magic the Gathering. I miss going to pubs and discussing micro brew beers with my friends. I spent a whole car ride yesterday day dreaming about snowboarding. I want to go home.

Some of you know that I was thinking about extending for a little while. The more I think about it though, the only way it makes sense with the reasons behind it, I would have to extend in my village. And if I did that I would have to stay for a whole year ( My village needs me to be replaced if my projects aren't to just collapse). And I'm just not willing to stay for another hot season. After a 2 yr long summer, I need fall and winter!

So I guess come tomorrow I will officially be "on the way out." I've tried to ignore the looming COS date but I think after tomorrow it will be even harder.