Well, it's 11:30pm on Tuesday night (the 5th) and I am very much not asleep.
The Blue Rocket pulls out of the driveway at 5am ... I hate to be overly dramatic, but that's when the adventure really begins. Packing and planning have been such a process, but now the actual 'travel' part begins and I could not be more excited.
People tend to ask the same questions when they find out that I'm leaving to study abroad, and honestly these questions frustrate me a little bit because I can't honestly give the little two sentence answers that people are looking for.
Are you ready to go?
Um...is someone ever really truly fully ready for something like this? I mean, my stuff is packed and the suitcase looks like it'll hopefully eek in under the 50 lb weight limit. I have my flight itinerary and passport handy and clothes laying aside that I'm planning on traveling in, so I guess so? But being 'ready' isn't just a physical preparedness, but also a cognitive and emotional one. Emotionally, yeah, bring it on. But it almost hasn't entirely sunk in for my head yet...that this is ACTUALLY happening. that I'm ACTUALLY getting on a plane tomorrow and moving a few thousand miles away for a little over four months. It's crazy, and I don't know that someone can actually be totally ready for that.
What are you most looking forward to?
Um... everything? But most people don't take that as an acceptable answer.
So I usually choose something like "seeing Antigua" or "touring a coffee plantation and going coffee tasting" or "hiking a volcano" or "spending time by the ocean." But...it's so much more complex than that. My inner melancholy wants to try to quantify and explain what it is that's stirring in my heart but I can't. I straight up can't. It's so much new and beautiful and exciting. It's as clear a line in the sand as any my life will offer me. It's a blank slate, a new country, new friends, new language. All of it. I'm looking forward to all of it.
What makes you the most nervous?
Um...everything? But again, most people don't take that as an acceptable answer.
Usually I'll come up with something about how new everything is and how many unknowns there are with this trip. I'll ramble about not knowing the language or my host family or my housemate or my schedule or who I'm flying with, but there's honestly very little that I know definitively about this trip and, though it scares me, it's SO. Incredibly. Good. for me to have to learn that. I'm intentionally trusting the process and the program and flying to a place that overwhelms me a little bit in all of the best possible ways and that excites and terrifies me beyond belief!
The Blue Rocket pulls out of the driveway at 5am ... I hate to be overly dramatic, but that's when the adventure really begins. Packing and planning have been such a process, but now the actual 'travel' part begins and I could not be more excited.
People tend to ask the same questions when they find out that I'm leaving to study abroad, and honestly these questions frustrate me a little bit because I can't honestly give the little two sentence answers that people are looking for.
Are you ready to go?
Um...is someone ever really truly fully ready for something like this? I mean, my stuff is packed and the suitcase looks like it'll hopefully eek in under the 50 lb weight limit. I have my flight itinerary and passport handy and clothes laying aside that I'm planning on traveling in, so I guess so? But being 'ready' isn't just a physical preparedness, but also a cognitive and emotional one. Emotionally, yeah, bring it on. But it almost hasn't entirely sunk in for my head yet...that this is ACTUALLY happening. that I'm ACTUALLY getting on a plane tomorrow and moving a few thousand miles away for a little over four months. It's crazy, and I don't know that someone can actually be totally ready for that.
What are you most looking forward to?
Um... everything? But most people don't take that as an acceptable answer.
So I usually choose something like "seeing Antigua" or "touring a coffee plantation and going coffee tasting" or "hiking a volcano" or "spending time by the ocean." But...it's so much more complex than that. My inner melancholy wants to try to quantify and explain what it is that's stirring in my heart but I can't. I straight up can't. It's so much new and beautiful and exciting. It's as clear a line in the sand as any my life will offer me. It's a blank slate, a new country, new friends, new language. All of it. I'm looking forward to all of it.
What makes you the most nervous?
Um...everything? But again, most people don't take that as an acceptable answer.
Usually I'll come up with something about how new everything is and how many unknowns there are with this trip. I'll ramble about not knowing the language or my host family or my housemate or my schedule or who I'm flying with, but there's honestly very little that I know definitively about this trip and, though it scares me, it's SO. Incredibly. Good. for me to have to learn that. I'm intentionally trusting the process and the program and flying to a place that overwhelms me a little bit in all of the best possible ways and that excites and terrifies me beyond belief!