17 Days

In a little more than 2 weeks and I will be on a plane flying to my future home of 4 months. After a pretty long shopping day yesterday and last week, I think I am almost set on everything that I need to bring with me. Just a few more little things I need to pick up here and there, but all the major things I need I have bought by now. Now it is basically just a waiting game. I am done with work for the summer and have two weeks ahead of me where I do not know what to really do with myself. The more free time I have, the more I start thinking about exactly what is to come over the next semester and I start to freak out a little. This is completely out of my comfort zone and unlike anything I have ever done before, but it is also something I have to do. And when it is over I know I will look back and be glad I did it. But for the meanwhile, I just can’t stop thinking about everything that I am going to have to deal with.

As much as I hate Suffern NY, I have never been away from it for this long in my life. Even in Boston, I was able to hop on a bus and come home in 4 hours if I wanted to. But there is no bus I can just hop onto from the Netherlands. There is also the whole issue of living somewhere where I do not understand what people are saying. For the most part, yes I will be in the castle where everyone speaks English, but going into the town of Well or going to other countries where I am completely lost when it comes to what they are saying, sort of freaks me out. Finally the last issue I have is money. Yes I worked all summer and refused to do anything that required money, I still am $1000-$2000 short of what they recommend you bring with you. I know I can be pretty frugal and get along with little to no money, but a lot of this trip is going to depend on what other people want to do. If everyone I am with wants to go to a nice restaurant, I can't just leave them and get a loaf of bread and some cheese by myself. Or if they all want to stay in a hotel, I am not going to go stay in a hostel alone, because lets face it, I don't want to die.

I think what it all comes down to is that I am just having natural trepidations about my voyage that hopefully will amount to nothing significant. I feel kind of like how most people feel when they are getting ready to leave for their freshman year of college. Of course I didn't really have any of those trepidations last year because I was just so excited to leave and get away that I wasn't even thinking about things that could go wrong. So I kind of think that those natural nerves of freshman year have carried over to my nerves of going abroad during my sophomore year.

And even still, every single apprehension that I have, is balanced out with, or overridden by complete excitement. I get to live in a castle with some really really awesome people, travel around to lots of countries and cities in Europe, while still getting 4 classes out of the way. It’s a pretty awesome deal.