Ends & Beginnings (Scott)

Wow -- this week has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Today is my last day of "official" work for the next two and half years (technically during the Peace Corps we will be volunteers), and we are moving out of our apartment tomorrow. Again, bittersweet is how I would describe this whole experience.

The sweet part is relatively east to describe. At this point in our lives, Ashlee and I feel as if the world is our oyster. We've been looking forward to this next chapter of our lives for years now. When we first kicked around the idea of joining the Peace Corps close to three years ago, we were probably eating breakfast at the good ol' freshers' cafeteria at the University of Edinburgh. At that point, the idea was so abstract and remote that, while it still excited feelings of fancy and wonder, it was just a mere possibility and, all in all, something that was not likely to happen. Now, at the tail-end of the application process and after navigating numerous hooks and snags, we are literally on the threshold of our future. No wonder the moment is pretty sweet -- it has definitely been a long time coming.

Now the bitter part is a bit harder to pin down. Essentially I have boiled it down to the fact that we are saying goodbye to pretty much everything that is comfortable and familiar to us. We've been in Newport Beach for two years now. We love our apartment and we got quite used to our jobs. We established some firm routines -- all the way down to the fact that every morning I would wake up and prepare tea and coffee while Ashlee would make our sack lunches. It is completely true that human beings are creatures of habits -- and now we are throwing all those habits out the window. We will be spending the next two and a half years swimming against the current. Come on. let's face it: while we think the Peace Corps is a wonderful idea, the plain truth is that 8 out of 10 people probably think we're nuts. They may find it admirable, and maybe even inspiring, but nuts nonetheless. The silver lining to the whole thing is that as nuts as some people may think we are, Ashlee and I both know that we are completely sane (the motto, I'm sure, of every lunatic asylum) and that we are doing something that makes us extremely happy. We're jumping outside of the box, we're swimming upstream, and we're making our own way -- along with every other appropriate metaphor alluding to Frost's road less traveled. And it will make all the difference.

At this moment, Ashlee and I also realize how blessed we are to have such wonderful family and friends who love and support us, often unconditionally. We cannot tell them all how much this means to us. Thank you all.