For the past couple of months, I’d been filling out forms, doing research, and basically spending a small fortune on couriers for various visas. The first one is a Schengen visa for a trip I’m taking to Bonn/Cologne, Germany for a media forum this June. The other is for my U.S. student visa, which required a lot of back-and-forth paperwork with Columbia before I could even schedule an appointment.

It’s happening all too quickly; I’m on my last few days of work with Metro, and I leave for the U.S. in a month and a half. The checklist of things to bring is getting longer, just as the time spent here with family and friends is quickly ebbing away. There’s barely enough time to spend with J, who’ll be leaving for Bangkok before I get back to Manila from Bonn; he’ll be returning a day or two ahead of my departure for New York. Whenever people find out he’s a pilot, they’re dismissive about the distance, saying that he can easily fly to visit me. Not really, because PAL doesn’t fly to the East Coast in the first place.

I’m excited and apprehensive, because for the first time in what feels like forever, I feel like I have direction again. I still don’t know where I’m headed for the next few years, but this feels like a leap instead of the baby steps I’d been making for the past couple of years.