One more month...

I leave New Jersey in one month! As each day passes I feel the weight of anxiety pressing on my shoulders. Sometimes I find it hard to breathe when I start to think about the fact that I'm moving to a foreign country, a place that I don't know anyone, where people don't speak my language (in India most people spoke English, so it wasn't much of a problem), and where I will work as an English teacher- a position with which I have very little prior experience. Thoughts pulse through my head such as:
Will I enjoy teaching English? Will the school like me? Will the other teachers like me? Will my students like me? How soon am I going to find a place to live? Will I have enough money to start off with? Will I ever figure out how to maneuver myself through the Hanoi traffic? Am I going to have to eat something, that I consider gross, just to be nice? What if I get lonely? How soon will it take me to manage a conversation in Vietnamese? And the list goes on...

I'm sure that I had similar thoughts before I left for India, and that worked out wonderfully! I will be just fine.

In administrative news:
I just received my documents back from Washington on Monday, so I'm very relieved about that. They are all signed by Condoleeza Rice herself! The next step is to send them to the Vietnamese embassy to have them translated into Vietnamese and then certified. I was worried about them not returning in time, so I emailed the HR guy that I've been in contact with at Language Link. I asked him if it would be alright if I brought the documents with me at their current stage and have them translated/certified once I get to Vietnam. His response was:

Great to hear from you. I'm afraid the system for US citizens, as you have seen from all previous attachments, is the most protracted. My suggestion to you is that you send the documents to the Vietnamese Embassy and have them returned to your family/friends to forward by secure postage such as Fed Ex/TNT etc.

So, I guess that's what I will be doing. I'll send them out sometime this week and perhaps perhaps I will get them before I fly out to San Francisco.