On the surface this morning didn't seem much different than any other. I got up at 5:15am... well, ok, the alarm went off at 5:15 and I got up 10 minutes later! I grabbed a cup of coffee, some b'fast and a bottle of water from the Starbucks drive-thru on the way to the office. To me, however, it was all a bit surreal.
It's interesting though that things that seem routine are hitting me a little differently the past few weeks. It's been something like 21 years since I was in the Dominican Republic with my church youth group doing construction at an orphanage. And almost 15 years since I walked through the slums of Recife, Brazil while shooting a video for a school there. The images of both places are faint, painted over by years of being worlds away from that kind of poverty. But I still have a small inkling of what I might face tonight and over the next several days in Haiti.
It struck me this morning, as I drove in to the office to meet my ride to the airport, how sparkling clean Charlotte is. I always notice this after returning from other cities like Chicago, Toronto or Buffalo (no disrespect meant to friends and family who live in those cities). I have access and the means to anything I could possibly need and more to excess. I'm bracing myself for seeing unimaginable living conditions... with people who probably can't imagine our excessive wealth and comfort. Here, I walk with friends through terrible hardships and heartbreak on a regular basis. That's tough, but again I'm bracing myself for even worse.
I'm nervous about all this, but excited at the same time. It's cool to be able to do something this meaningful at a job that most of the time is for the purpose of entertaining others. The next five days are going to be very interesting indeed.
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