Have a Good Trip!

It has been quite the ordeal preparing to go to New Zealand. When I went to England it felt like a trip. My stuff was left here, all in mom's basement, ready for me to return to. I went with a plan to go for a year. It was like a long holiday, even though I ended up staying for 2 years. Somehow this feels different... perhaps because I sold or gave away basically everything I owned (including my cat), perhaps because I don't know if Canada will be my home in the future, or perhaps for some other mysterious reason.

Just the process of sorting through all of my stuff has been a mix of emotions. Laughing at some of the notes passed with friends in high school, amazement at the brilliant report I did on the Whooping Crane in Grade 4, sadness at birthday cards from my now deceased grandparents, confusion over just who was this Jamie guy who wrote me the most ridiculous love poem... I definitely kept some of the good memory stuff as I'm sure I will enjoy going through it again in 10 or 20 years, but did I ever purge! My life in Canada now fits in a dozen Rubbermaid totes.

As I say goodbye to people they inevitably say, "Have a good trip!" Trip? Am I going on a trip? I'm moving to another country with no plans to return. Maybe I will come back to Canada to live, maybe I won't. I really have no idea what the future holds. It's very exciting. And yet it scares me as well.