Pa(ni)cking

Why hello there! My name is Jacqueline. Some of you may be wondering why I am not Marielle. This is a perfectly valid thing to wonder, as this is primarily her blog. Explanation as follows:

1. I am also taking une année sabbatique (a gap year) before going to Wellesley College in Massachusetts this fall. For the past semester, I trained to become a sexual violence advocate and then interned at the Sexual Violence Center in north Minneapolis. For a glimpse into what life was like there, you can check out a post I wrote for their blog a couple of weeks ago:

http://sexualviolencecenter.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/one-moment-at-a-time

2. I am leaving to intern at a non-governmental organization in Ndar/Saint-Louis, Senegal. In less than four hours (hence the title). I will be there for two months before Marielle and I meet up in India for the final blowout adventure (hem, educational experience) of the year.

3. I consider Marielle to be my sister. Since I already share/steal so many things with/from her, it felt natural to hop on board her blog, especially as we'll be traveling and living together from mid-March-June.

SO yes, that hopefully explains what I, a stranger, am doing here. I promise that I've done nothing to Marielle, and she will continue to regularly update her adoring fans of her adventures in England, Switzerland and Spain.

I filled the past few weeks with just about everything that I love about Minneapolis. There was a lot of tea, salsa dancing, Punch pizza, taking my dog/angel Odie to parks, and, of course, the season premiere of The Bachelor. However, now feels like the time to set sail. The wonderful people at SVC gave me a lovely and hot chocolate-y sendoff on Wednesday, and my family is already in the planning stages of a "Jacqui Liberation Dinner" (it's hard for normal people to live around a bossy, vegetarian health nut).

I have never gone so far away, so alone, and for such a long time. I can't fathom how someone could just pack up their bags and go. Especially if a certain canine companion named Odie had "buried" their bone at the very base of this someone's neatly folded clothing pile, destroying all semblance of organization in the process.

The next time I write, I'll have moved in with my host family in Saint-Louis and be a bit oriented to my city and job. Fun times!

à +

Jacqueline