It's currently 2:23 AM and my flight for France, or France via Dallas and Heathrow, leaves in exactly 12 hours and 17 minutes. And, as the title of this post says, my bags are finally packed, with the exception of adding my computer, its charger and some snacks to my backpack.
These past couple days/ weeks, as I've been preparing to spend four months abroad, have made me realize several things, including:
1. There are way too many bad 10+ minute youtube videos on packing strategies. In hindsight I should have watched maybe half of one and then used the rest of those wasted minutes actually, you know, packing.
2. It is possible for me to pack a large suitcase, carry-on and backpack for four months and still have a tiny bit of extra space.
3. You have to buy/ do a lot of random stuff before departing the country for four months. Call the bank and fight with the automated voice commands they have, figure out how to get four+ months of prescription medicine at once, figure out international calling plans, think of an appropriate gift for a French woman of whom you know nothing about, make sure you are stocked up on items or brands you might not be able to find in France-- chief among them peanut butter and deodorant, figuring out how to blog, etc.
4. I get my procrastination from my dad (that's a heritable trait, right?) But really, my dad was in charge of my phone situation and this evening around 6:30 pm we were still frantically trying to figure out how to unlock my phone to switch networks when we didn't submit the unlock request until two days ago. It's still not unlocked yet, but the problem is essentially solved. So, there's that. And I, in true procrastinator fashion, did not start packing until last night. For the past couple weeks people kept asking me if I'd packed yet, to which my response was always, "But I don't leave for another X amount of days! I can't start packing yet." And then it turned into two days before I leave and that excuse couldn't really cut it anymore.
5. As excited as I am to be studying in France for a semester, a small part of me is actually going to miss Kirksville. Weird, I know. If you would have asked me three years ago, I never thought I'd miss Kirksville ever. But, more importantly, I'm going to miss the people there – my friends, not the townies, obviously (with the exception of my family who are residents of the town of Kirksville/ the greater Kirksville area…)
Anyway, I feel as if I've rambled on enough about my preparations. I need to try to get some sleep and mentally prepare myself for what I am sure will be the adventure of a lifetime. I wish I could just be in France right now so I could start figuring everything out, but I have many hours of traveling ahead of me still.
I'll try to update this regularly-ish, but I don't want to make any promises I can't keep. So, until next time, I'll leave you with the link to the John Denver song from which I stole the title of this post.
Bisous!
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