african abscond-inations

Hit Parade Group 1

abscond (v.) - to depart clandestinely; to steal off and hide

So I'm sitting in Inman Perk right now about to do a last minute review for my GRE which is tomorrow (eek!) at 8AM. Reviewing flash cards I made in a desperate attempt to improve my vocabulary at the last minute, I came across the word "abscond" which coincidentally was the very first word on the GRE Hit Parade Group 1. Unless you are extremely obtuse, you would notice that the title of my blog is African Abscondinations. So I thought it appropriate to go ahead and use this post to explain the title of this blog.

Abscondination in actuality is not a word but rather a neologism created by Jess. It was also a word we used to throw around our sophomore year as a joke to describe our many "attempts" to run away from school in favour of a much more suitable location, a strong predilection for either the beach or the mountains. Basically anywhere other than the mundane environment of Tech and Atlanta. By having this blog detail not just my future day to day life in the Peace Corps but also my application process, I'm obviously not departing my life in Atlanta so clandestinely as I had hoped; however, I think the word "abscond" aptly describes my situation since I am sort of "running away" from my life in Atlanta and hopefully my life in Atlanta won't realize I'm truly gone until I'm safely across the ocean lol. Or at least that's the plan.

So props to Jess for inspiring my blog's title. Incidentally, my use of the word "ridiculous" in the sub-title is also a reference to our banter from sophomore year. man, sophomore year was definitely a GREAT year. *le sigh*...

Bon soir,

-Nikhil

P.S. If you happen to be a perspicacious person, you will hopefully have noticed that I attempted to sporadically interject this post with as many GRE Hit Parade Group 1 words as I felt appropriate in an attempt to practice (I still want this post to sound somewhat eloquent and not so convoluted though). Try and see if you can find them all. The first person to correctly count the number of GRE words in this post gets a cookie! or a free beer (if you are of legal age)!