It has been a little more than a week since I have moved in with my host family. Many transformations have happened within me, but that is another story. This blog post was supposed to be uploaded a while ago but due to internet and battery issues that did not happen. Anyways, here it is now.
I wrote this as I was at pre-departure training in San Francisco:
The journey is about to begin. Actually, it has already begun. It all started, over two years ago ,when I found this programme through one of my best friends in my home country, Portugal. It really resonated with me. At the time, I ended up going to a United World College in now called the Kingdom of eSwatini. It was a magical experience. One of those that change you and your life forever. Sometimes that change is so big that you will never be able to go back. (This is something I know will happen with GCY as well, I fell it already.) Fast forward approximately 2 years from enrolling there, I found myself applying to GCY. The opportunity of applying came out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Nowhere because I was meant to go to university this fall since I graduated from high school in November and would have kind of a forced gap year already. Everywhere because due to personal circumstances I wasn’t able to apply to university at that time and so decided to do apply for this gap year programme that I had been being so hyped and curious about. Here I am. Just writing my first post sitting on my really tall bed in one of the dorms in Stanford university at global launch. There is only a day left here before departing to what will soon become my (soon to be called) home. My third world. (stay tuned because I will elaborate on this on a further post…)
When I wrote those words I was just excited. Excited to be going to India, excited because I was making friends, excited because it was the begging of a new journey in my life. Two weeks have passed since I came to India. This might sound silly, but I am not the same person who wrote those words. I have seen and tasted and smelled and felt so many new things and emotions that I cannot explain. I now have started my journey.
