From the Journal: 21-8-08

Today, my parents dropped me off at the Embassy Suites near the airport in Miami. I didn´t cry, although I think my dad was tearing up.

The people at the counter for AFS gave me a nametag and an ID badge, and I gave them my passport in return. I think they matched it up with my plane ticket for tomorrow, I dunno. After that, I went into one of the big lounges where there was like, 40 other kids sitting there, all white. That kind of threw me off for a moment, but I found a seat and gradually started talking to the other kids. They were pretty interesting; as I somehow always do, I managed to join up with the very loud, very strange people. I´m like that, I sort of gravitate towards them. Seriously, when the person was announcing the places that people were going to, my table was the only table that clapped. The only one. Every country. I sort of just sat there, because I was writing in my journal (NOT A DIARY) and I realized that I´m going to need more than one of these. I hope i can find more in Otavalo. I really like it. It fits into my man-bag perfectly. So, we did some boring orientation stuff, talked about gestures, sexual harassment, that kind of thing. We also had to preform a skit/song/picture/whatever about AFS, the mission, how to get sent home, etc. Our skit was about an AFS student who eats monkey brains, gets sick, and has to go to a hospital. Hitchhiking, he gets picked up by another AFS student who is smoking a joint while driving. They then pick up a pregnant AFS student and an AFS Liason, who busts them all. It was about the ways an AFS student can be sent home. Then, one of the girls played Taps on the harmonica, while another one read out the AFS mission. It was fun. After that, we went back to our rooms. I did see Kito-Jacobi Ford Rose again. I first met her when I went to the orientation specific to Florida a couple of months ago. She was the only other black person, and also the only other person to be going to Ecuador from Florida. I thought it would just be the two of us going, but there are actually twelve of us! (Hindsight: 15, actually) So that´s nice.We´re not going to any of the same places, though. I´ve only met one person who´s going to the North besides me, but we´ll meet more exchange students when we get to Quito, from all over the world. That will be cool.

After I got back to my room, I watched The Office on my computer until 12PM (Hindsight: 12AM, stupid.)

252 Days to go: Approx.