Next Chapter

In the last four and a half months I have traveled an estimated 5314 miles by foot, car, train, and bus, (not including one way flights from San Jose to Portland--thanks Chrissandra!-- Portland to Denver and Detroit to NYC) crossed all four continental time-zones, met and made friends everywhere I went, ate incredibly well most days and had the time of my life. From the coasts of California and Oregon all the way to the coast of New York I have seen much of this country. But how can I begin to sketch such an odyssey for you. How can I describe to you what the sun looked like as it set off the coast of Big Sur, California, on a warm april night or how I felt as I watched it silently as I sat next to a friend I hadn't seen in a long time? Or what it was like to experience a Lakota sweat lodge, praying, sweating, chanting, scared, alone, feeling my skin's pain as it began to bake in the immense heat of the lodge? I could easily write a post on each of these experiences, describing them in more detail, but these were experiences that had to be felt to be truly understood.

I think both experiences pale in comparison to this next experience I present to you in question form. How can I tell you how humbled and amazed I am that in every single city I visited, there was always a friend, a family, or a kind heart to welcome me to stay in their home, not as a guest, but rather as family. My name is now Jonathan James Lawerence Schindler Redmond Hill Weaver Smallwood Corbetta Trucco Lloyd Otten Kunz Koenen Bablonka Steacy Steinle Hayner Kessler Landolfe and a whole cast of names I don't know nor remember. Yea, I haven't paid rent in a real long time.

Despite this incredible love and beauty I have witnessed this year, my heart grows heavy. Not because my travels end, but rather because in a way they are about to begin and I have to say goodbye to this long-chained family I am apart of. It's the end of one era and the beginning of a new. Tomorrow I leave NYC for Boston for a two week orientation with Jesuit Volunteer Corp. International, only before I depart for Belize City, Belize Aug. 1st for two years, where I'll be teaching at the Belize Central Prison.

As I said earlier, my experience is my own and as for anyone it is hard to truly understand someones experience without being there to feel the feelings involved. So this blog is going to be my attempt to try to share those feelings with you as they happen, to both update you and involve you in my experience. And since I won't have access to internet daily, don't expect there to be a pattern to the consistency of my entries. Typical me anyway. Would you want it any other way?

I am quite ecstatic to walk through the threshold of my awaiting two year journey tomorrow.

And as we all do, I walk into the unknown,

Jon

Tomorrow

I laugh at today

not alone