going vs. leaving

"It's not the going that's hard, it's the leaving," I've been telling people lately. I'm excited about being a PCV, eager to experience a new culture, ready to take this next step in my life. But at the same time, I'm going to have to go through a lot of goodbyes in the next three weeks, and some of those will be tough ones, people who mean a lot to me.

But the important people in my life have begun to scatter already. I have close friends in Texas, in Pennsylvania, and in Germany (not to mention everyone still in Michigan!). And the fact that I can't spend time with them whenever I want to doesn't mean that we aren't still close. That's rather comforting.

Also, I was reading a book of short essays by a former MSU professor's wife this week, and in one of them, she wrote about a move her family made that she wasn't overly excited about. The minister of her church told her, "You haven't met all the significant people in your life yet." When I read that, it hit me...neither have I. My fellow PCVs, my host families, the students I'll be teaching--all these people will help shape who I am, and some of them, I'm sure, will be people whom I grow close to. And that's really cool. Not that the relationships that I have now with people aren't important, but that there are new ones that I'll have the opportunity to make.