Shia’s first blog post- 4 months before

Being gone for 7 months is very frightening, leaving friends, grandparents, school, and pets.  When all of this is on your mind it’s hard to think about the excitement of going around the world!  Thinking about it is like reading a book about it, yet it seems so real!  I mean, it seemed fake before, but now that our tickets are booked and school has started, it seems more real for the first time.  I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, I’ve never had as mixed thoughts and feeling as I do now.  When I try to think about it, my friends come up in my mind, I know I’ll miss them so much.  But I guess if I had to choose something I’m most excited for, I’d choose animals.  I can’t get enough of them!  I would really like to work with animals when I’m older.  I like to pet sit and I’m waiting to see when I can volunteer at an animal shelter.  I know I want to swim and be with sharks and dolphins, I want to skydive and see what it’s like to fly like a bird, and I want to see jaguars and watch them run up jungle trees like it’s a walk in the park.  I could sit for hours watching a sloth try and move from one tree to another.  And trust me, it takes forever!  In every place I go to I’m going to research the endangered animals and try to help these animals.  There are so many things I don’t know about animals, and I love them all so much.  Over the 7 months I’ll be gone, I want to learn as much as I can.  I’m also really excited to see how other places work.  I’m only really familiar with how where I live functions.  Are there places like Walmart that sells from camping stuff to school supplies?  Or does every place only sell one thing?  If so, is that more functional than just having Walmart or King Soopers?  What do their houses look like and does it work like ours?  There are so many questions and I hope they will be answered on the trip.  Some things I’m not excited for on the trip is new foods.  I barely like the ones I eat now!  I don’t want to be eating sheep stomach or fried spiders, which is a real food from Cambodia. Wish me luck!  I also am going to get bored of the architecture.  The first building is interesting, but then every other building looks the same.  And my mom wants to look at every building for 15 minutes each.  That could get old.  Well even after writing this blog, I’m still not sure how I really feel about leaving, but it cleared it up a little.  December 29th, wow.

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