Leaving the USA

I'm from Detroit, and we had a year with some really bad flooding.  It damaged countless homes and made people's homes unsafe if the basements flooded.  My friend found an organization that was helping to fix the damage done to these homes and it didn't cost the homeowner anything.  This is when I learned about All Hands and Hearts.  https://www.allhandsandhearts.org/

I met a girl from Germany, who was staying in a local church while she was volunteering with this group.  They gave her a bed during her volunteering time and meals on the days she was working.  (She bought her own food on her days off.)  This is a thing?  What?  How is this not insanely popular as a thing for college kids in the US to do?  This stuck with me.

Having the American dream is what people work so hard for during their lifetimes.  A home, a car, and a family is pretty much the end goal.  Relationships, yeah, I don't have that mastered, but I had a nice little 2 bedroom house in a suburb and a leased car.  Not exactly rich, but good enough.  But, it wasn't.  I felt a strong need to travel, but I never felt like I could afford it.  

A few years after volunteering with AHAH (All Hands and Hearts) in Detroit, I just knew I needed a big life change.  I left my job, sold my house and basically all my stuff, turned in my car, and started on a new life.  That sounds easy as a sentence, but it took around a year to accomplish all that.  Getting rid of stuff is really hard, but completely worth it.

I signed up for a program in Nepal with AHAH rebuilding schools that were damaged during the 2015 earthquake.  They sent a list of things to bring, because I would be camping on the side of a mountain.  What the hell was I thinking?  Did I make a mistake?  My mind would panic when I thought of what I was about to do.  It had to be fate, a friend of a friend was from Nepal and he would be in Kathmandu when I arrived.  

On January 1, 2018 I left the US and went to Canada with my friend to catch a flight to Nepal.  She dropped me off at the airport and my life changed forever.  

To be continued in my next entry...