Well after nearly 12 months of planning, we're finally leaving tomorrow for our 5 week trip. Spent the day with Elise, family & packing my (~12kg) pack.
I'll be posting as many pictures and entries as I can along the way. Feel free to email me (jye@jyesmith.com) or comment here.
I guess I should also explain that I am returning to Colombia in January/February 2008, which prompted all this. With 3 of my closest friends, we'll land in LAX, head to Mexico for a week, stop off in Miami for a few hours, then to Colombia for three weeks, back to Miami for a week, and then return to LAX for a few days before heading back to Australia.
I'm really grateful and excited to be sharing my first trip back with my closest mates.
I've now written back to my mother's email, and am waiting a reply.
Got my first email from my birth mother today - surreal.
That's the only way to describe how this has felt for the past 24 hours. I really wasn't sure how to react - hearing your birth mother speak for the first time in over 21 years.
My friends from the US translated the letter for me within the hour. I was still in shock - and didn't know how to react. But having my Spanish teacher read it allowed for me (in Spanish) was the most moving.
Obviously my head is filled with all kinds of questions and doubts. More on that later.
But I guess what I really wanted to say is how much this makes me feel like a child. I'll always be somebody's child. But this makes me feel naive, even helpless at times - there is just so much wonder.