Pregame post

Location: Albany, California. The Morning Room.
Next destination: Lahaina, HI on Wednesday, September 19th.


Saying goodbye is a very strange thing. Some people hate it, and long goodbyes are just the severest form of torture. I've yet to really form an opinion on the matter because I honestly haven't ever said any real goodbyes. Like the kind where you'll never see them again, or it'll be years, or it'll at least be too long. When I leave or they leave, it's more like a "nice seeing you, see you again soon", though that in no way means it's any less dramatic. I love dramatic. I like dragging out the goodbyes, and leaving gifts or messages, or bringing up old beef right before we part, or pretending that there is something incredibly important that needs to be sorted out before anything else happens as we work against the clock. I love it all, and it's a rather terrible habit.
My fascination with the eventful and impermanent goodbye is being put to the test by my current situation. For the first time ever I'm at a point where goodbye will actually mean goodbye. Not because I'm dying or they are dying or we're forbidden to ever meet again, but simply because it will never be the same. I guess that fact has been true before for other people, but this time it's true for me. I have no idea who I will be after each leg of my adventure and the people I know and love won't be standing still either. So all that's left to do really, is to be grateful for the time that has been spent, the people who you've connected with, and the relationships and moments that were extraordinary and fleeting.
Thoughts on goodbye aside, the adventure looks like this. Tomorrow morning at 7:45 I board a flight to Maui with Claire Fahrner. She and I are going to live on Maui and participate in the WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) program there with a family run organic farm. WOOFing is a work exchange program, so if we can be productive on the farm for five hours a day, five days a week, they will feed and house us. Which is awesome if you are 18 and self-financing your entire gap year (hint: me). Claire is a champion because she agreed to spend three months with a crazy person on an Island digging in the dirt. She starts school at Mount Holyoke College in January, and until then is adventuring with me. I am super grateful for that, I was worried that the beginning part of my gap year would be lonely, but she's ensured it won't be!
The family we're working for has two farms, a dragon fruit farm on the dry side of the island and a lettuce farm on the wet side. By a stroke of incredible luck a good timing, Claire and I get to work six weeks on the dry side and then spend six weeks on the wet side, double the adventure eh?
After we've farmed and learned to be hardcore, we'll come home December 12th. From there I head on to England, India and perhaps a few place in between. But I'll get to that later. For now, the focus is Hawaii.
In all honesty, Claire and I have no idea what we're getting ourselves into. We don't know who the other WWOOFers will be, how hard the work is or what we're going to do with ourselves when we're not farming. In spite of our serious lack of information and no doubt relative incompetence for farm work, we've packed our bags and said our goodbyes. And, in my opinion, that's part of the gap year experience.
I've planned this gap year carefully, earned the money to fund it, bought my plane tickets and played pen pal with the connections I have to set it up. Those aspects of the trip I am sure about. However, there are so many things I cannot plan for and it just has to be that way. A lot of people ask my why I'm doing this, taking a whole year and deferring from school to go scrounging my way across the globe. The first and most honest answer is simply because I want to. I want my education to encompass not only what people and books can teach me, but also what I can go out and teach myself by being open to the idea that the space I inhabit is small and the world around me is big. And it all starts tomorrow morning.