I've been saying it was Felt for years!

Leaving home in 7 hours...

First order of business, read this: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/books/peopleofpaper.excerpt.html
I think I had an existential experience while doing so last night. Also, if you have yet to hear of McSweeney's, or its creator, Dave Eggers, I strongly urge you to make it a priority.

Secondly: Thank you to Evelyn, who has more common sense than I, for suggesting that I post my Costa Rica address/ phone number here:

Adam Yukelson
c/o WorldTeach
Apdo. 8-5020
Correo Central, San Jose, Costa Rica

Host Family Phone: 011- 506 - 546 - 2641

...Mail will take about 2 weeks to reach me (as implied by the address, all mail goes through the WT offices)...Phone calls, hopefully not as long...

As for me, slouched in the corner of my white-walled room, completely comfortable on my full size mattress, I'm staring at my ceiling fan, admiring its silence, and sort of indifferently wondering whether this will be the last time for 10 weeks that my bedroom light won't be attracting flocks of winged creatures. I don't understand travel. There's some degree of meaning, or reality, lost in jet travel. Tomorrow night I'll be sleeping in Costa Rica. How? Shouldn't there be a challenging right of passage, a trial, a discomfort involved in this type of trip? I'm not talking Lost; not even Oregon Trail; I just want that long period of reflection that comes between preparation and action - like the time you'd spend with your Dad in the car, driving cross country.

I can't stop thinking about fatalism. I don't think this experience is pre-determined - not by any means - but isn't it crazy that there are 24 other people, at various locations around this country, anywhere, right now, waiting just as I am, to converge on "room E" in the Miami International Hotel at 4pm tomorrow, to meet, to interact, to begin frienships and establish collaborative crutches, to begin, and all this will happen, must happen, has perhaps happened a few times in my mind already, but has yet to occur. I will share experiences, pehaps intense, emotional ones, with persons I don't yet know. I guess that's life though. But wait. Add onto that the host family in Llano Bonito who is expecting a native English speaker from the United States (not America) to live in their house for 10 weeks. What are they thinking right now? Who do they expect? Has their daily routine changed yet? Have they waited years for this opportunity? Do they even see it as an opportunity? Do they even give a shit who I am or why I'm coming or how their lives will be different once I'm there and after I leave? And then there are the 60+ kids who are going to wake up tomorrow morning, as they've done a number of times in their 14-24 years on Earth, and are going to walk to school or take the bus or do whatever it is that Costa Rican kids do to transport themselves to school, and they're going to sit in class, or maybe they're going to stand, or maybe they're going to pace the room, and school will go on, tomorrow, June 2nd, as it always has, but as I'm making my way closer to them, are they looking forward to my arrival? Is this a big deal for them? Is this an intrusion? An Interruption? A blessing? Do they, outside of class, discuss the pending arrival of a North American? Does their current teacher talk to them about this native English speaker? Do they work towards my arrival every day? Has their been disproportionate preparation, I more than they, they more than I? Or maybe the teacher has yet to inform them...the fusing of our worlds will happen - this I know, and can accept - what boggles my mind is the structure, the overall structure that is already in place, with me, some sort of catalyst, and the people I will meet, whose diversity humbles me already, collectively waiting to be released upon the labrynth so we may etch in the spectacular details.