Packing, as usual.

I remember starting my blog for my trip to India with a short post about packing. I wrote about how it didn’t feel real yet and I still hadn’t started packing two days before. It seems two years later, I’m right back in that same spot, two days away from another trip and not even pretending to think about packing. Looking back, I was so excited for India. I can still remember all the anticipation of the unknown. I had no idea what I was getting into and I love that feeling. This time around I’ve been so caught up in the bureaucratic details of paperwork, visas, housing, and budgets, I haven’t had any time to get excited. Until now. So here are the simplest things that remind me how much I have to look forward to:

-Airports: I love the energy of people coming and leaving home, work, and vacation. I love the people you meet and have random conversations with. I love that everyone is temporarily connected by a feeling of transition.

-Airplanes: I love packing my little bag with everything I can possibly imagine I might need for 8 hours. I love take-off and watching the city shrink below me. I love the fact that I am forced to set aside time to think and rest and watch movies or read or write. I love tiny travel sized ice cream and that I can use flights as an excuse to buy a five dollar magazine.

-The Tube: I LOVE PUBLIC TRANSPORT. I love the smell of the tube and the blast of warm wind that precedes and follows each train. I love people watching on the tube and wondering where they’re going.

-School: It is well known that I am a dork and I love school. I’m so ready to have a routine again that challenges me intellectually, to be around other students, to feel accomplished after spending miserable sleepless nights of writing papers and finally turning it in.

-Living in another country: I love being the foreign one, even if it means making some sort of cultural blunder or offending someone by accident on a daily basis. Everything seems exotic and new when you are out of context. I love that I will be living with people from everywhere, where everyone will have different accents and different stories to tell and listen to different music and speak different languages.

-OLYMPICS 2012: Ok so this is still a year away, but DUH, I will be in London for the summer Olympics!!! Life goal of attending the Olympics is soon to be complete.

-The unknown: So this really is the main source of my stress but let’s admit it, I kinda like having to think on my feet when travelling. Who cares if I have to show up in London and then find somewhere to live, figure out what classes I’m taking, and see just how accurate my budget really is. There’s a challenge in travel that draws me back every time, and it always works out in the end.

So here I go. I have two days to pack, a ticket to London, and no plan once I show up. Thankfully, my papa is tagging along for the first week to help me get settled. Let the adventure begin… again.