Almost there…

If all goes well, I only have 8 weeks of school remaining, and then I will be finished with my undergrad. Finally. I’ve been working on it off and on for nearly a decade. When all is set and done I will have a BA in Biblical and Theological studies (emphasis in Biblical studies). I like the idea of graduate school, but at this point I seriously wonder if I’ll ever end up there. I don’t know if I have the patience for it honestly. I do end up there, it will not be for a long time, and then ONLY if there is some specific, practical purpose.

What happens next? Well, Anna and I still really want to end up in Thailand, at least for a period of life, but we are not sure what the path to getting there actually looks like, since there are so many really cool directions we oculd go (which I’m not going to get into right now… unfortuantely). It is something that we are hoping to have somewhat worked out in the next couple of months.

What I can say is what we have in process right now. Our goal at the moment is to get rid of most of our “stuff.” By August we would like to fit most everything we own into four 60lb suitcases. For international flying the standard limit is two 60lb suitcases per person, plus carry on baggage. In the weeks leading up to the end of the semester we were able to either get rid of, or mark for give away between 800 and 1000 objects. This included, but was not limited to:

-many bags of clothing for salvation army
-several bags of completely worn out clothing for tossing
-at least a couple of hundred books
-nearly all of my accumulated paperwork (articles, papers, notes, things I wanted to remember and reference back to someday) from the last 15 years. It was quite a lot.
-sold my laptop (which is unfortunate on some levels, because I feel like it is a machine that will be functional for quite a long time)
-pinewood derby trophies from when I was a kid
-collections of random things (like key chain collection)
-I got rid of my sword
-tons of random computer cables of all kinds (want some? Let me know!)
-video games that I was still holding onto (I actually still have to deliver those… these include most of the Final Fantasy games from 7 on)
-hundreds of random stuff that doesn’t fit in any category – the kind of stuff that once you start parting with stuff you wonder why in the world you’ve moved in boxes from home to home to home *4head2palm*

That said, we still have WAY too much stuff. There is a long way to go, but getting rid of perfectly fine (or even great) stuff that there is not much need for feels GREAT! It also feels very liberating. The completion of school is one step to “liberation” from being stuck local, and getting rid of all of our stuff is another.

As you probably guessed, the next step is to leave the country for very long periods of time. If I have it my way, we will only be back here (USA) from time to time. Yes, America is great, but after living in Thailand for 6 1/2 months in 2005 the rest of the world is just too cool to miss out on.

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