Preparing to Jump!

It’s now less than two months until MAD (Middle-Aged Dancer, a.k.a Michele Rusinko) and TAJ (Teen-Aged Juggler, a.k.a Josh Weisenfeld) leave for their trip around the world.  Whatever would possess a not particularly adventurous, small town college dance professor to embark on a eight and a half month journey around the globe with her 13 (soon to be 14) year old son? The simple answer would be “insanity.” A more accurate answer would be a bit longer so I now give you complete permission to scroll to the end of this entry if you don’t want to hear the tale.

In 2006, I was accepted in a Bush grant funded program called Service Learning for Social Justice, that enabled a group of faculty from Gustavus Adolphus College to travel to Namibia for two-weeks.  When I received notification that I was accepted to this program, I rushed home and told my then nine-year old son, “I’m going to Africa for two weeks!”  To which he enthusiastically asked, “Am I going too?”  I explained to him that this was a program just for faculty and, by way of appeasement, said something like “The next time I get to travel outside of the country I will make sure you can come with me.” 

Within one year of the trip to Namibia I proceeded to prove myself a complete liar by going to Italy with my sister-in-law.

So, yes, one reason for this trip is to restore some sense of credibility in my son’s eyes. Yet far more important to me is a heart held dream that my small town Minnesota raised son feel at home in the world.  What exactly that means – I hope to sort out in the next year. 

So Josh and I began fantasizing about spending my next sabbatical out in the world.  I started researching opportunities for guest teaching residencies and began talking to my colleagues who had taught abroad during their sabbaticals.  Little by little this idea evolved from a pipedream to a possibility and then inched its way toward a plan.  Artist Brian Andreas has a card in his StoryPeople line that says “In my dream, the angel shrugged and said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.” I think that same angel visited me.  There are a million reasons we should not go on this trip.  However, all of them feel like colossal  “failure(s) of imagination.”  So we are going.  In less than two months.

First we are heading to Sweden, where I taught 14+ years ago.  I was pregnant with Josh when I taught a “May term” at Skeriol Folkhogskola in Mora, Sweden.  I have always wanted to return there and it seems like a comfortable way to begin a year of uncertainties.  We will wind our way down through Eastern Europe, Western Europe and on to Israel.  By February we will have made our way to Zhuhai, China where I will teach the spring semester at the United International College.

As our departure gets closer, and I my anxiety about the trip grows stronger, I find myself turning to my trusted trinity of support: family, friends and books.  A few years back my sister gave me Anthony Boudain’s No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach.  The last few pages he sums up his best advice for travelers:   “No matter how well you plan and research, things will go wrong.  The place you end up will not be the way you imagined or hoped it would be. Your local guide will disappoint.  The restaurant you heard about will have moved, or changed hands, or burned down.  Be prepared to move to Plan B. Even if there is not Plan B. Travel is an amazing privilege and life is short.” 

With those last words as my mantra, my current coping technique is to replace fear with gratitude, breath deeply, bend my knees and prepare to jump.