This is it!

This perfectly sums up how I'm feeling today. Except instead of a call to arms against the French government, I feel like my war is with the airlines. All the time. 

I realize it isn't Tuesday, but I'm hoping to find forgiveness since this Tuesday will only be my second day in my brand new foreign country home. And again, I can't stress enough how challenging this "regular updating" thing will be....I'm hoping for some brownie points with a Sunday Update.

My last week in the US has felt more like a two week span, with all the craziness and activity that's been packed into it tighter than my clothes in my suitcase. The first half was mostly spent wanting nothing more than to get the show on the road and just get down there already while the second half was of course spent in a frenzied anguish over everything that has to be done and the big life-altering move I'm making in the next day. So between phone calls to friends, pie making, and soaking up the guilty pleasure of sitcoms on Netflix, there were the bank runs, the all-day errands to pick up the various necessities (and yes, I really mean necessities. You really shouldn't go without a rain jacket!), and a lot of my family coming to visit. Now, we didn't have 20 people in town all at once, no we broke it up. However, it wasn't exactly an even break. I saw one set of grandparents briefly earlier in the week and over the weekend, a good chunk of my mom's family was in town. It was more like 2 people, then 12 people a few days later. With about 48 hours of mad chaos and panic in between. Now, to get a good idea of how these more populated family gatherings go, recall everything about Toula's family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Now replace Greek with Italian. There you go.

Like I said: two weeks crammed into one.

But it really has been a good time and it's truly remarkable to me how in these past 7 days, I've really been able to find peace in everything. Of course these past 24 hours have consisted of me digging to the very depths of my being just to make sure that peace is still there because it's being overrun by nerves and doubts and packing, but I always find it. Almost always it takes someone being excited for me in order for me to remember to be excited for me. "Oh yeah, Self, this is actually a pretty sweet gig you managed to get."

So am I excited? Absolutely. Do I have enough nervous energy that I could run to Belize and get there before my flight is scheduled to land? You bet. But there's a lot of deep breathing and the promise of a movie night to keep me intact. 

Well, that's it for posts coming out of the US! When you read this, say a little prayer for all of us traveling. And one day I promise to explain the title of the blog (see what I did there? If you weren't curious before, you sure are now!)

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.