Exit. Enter.

Our mission team has prepared an exit checklist with 23 items (and counting) ~ everything from returning team library books to steps for disposing of a car, to help missionaries as they prepare to finish up their term.

I personalized the exit checklist by purchasing a small spiral-bound notebook that became “my book-that-is-my-life.” Starting with June 20th, I wrote the date with a Sharpie at the top of every second or third page. Then I filled in what I needed to do, leaving pages to add notes, etc. When I arrived in the U.S., this notebook still had some empty pages, although half the pages or more were filled with to-do lists of every imaginable sort, most happily checked off.

So for my first few weeks of life in America, I’ve been writing in it, on whatever blank page I could find, my to-do lists or my detailed notes from a 30-minute conversation with an internet provider, or directions to someone’s home, or …

The front cover holds my new address and the cell phone numbers of: the friend who picked me up at Charlotte Airport, my contacts for the car, and the man from church who asked me to call him when I was ready for him to bring over his son’s table & chairs for me to borrow. As time went on, I added the number for my mom’s cell phone (which I was borrowing), my phone number, my cell phone number, and my electric company customer ID.

As pages filled up, my daily to-do lists became sprinkled throughout the book in random order. Two weeks ago, as I sat at the cell phone shop, flipping through the “book-that-is-my-life,” trying to find my notes about the contract, I flipped past a to-do list from the PREVIOUS week, which contained my notes about canceling my cell phone contract in Japan.

So, basically, I spent weeks crossing items off a list of how to leave a country, only to tackle a similar list in reverse, i.e., how to enter a country. ☺