With a pack pack here, and a pack pack there...

Last night, I actually decided to be a responsible little traveler and start packing early. This serves a double purpose--firstly so that if I realized I was missing something vital, that I could have time to track it down. Secondly, so that if this suitcase thing was going to be a disaster, I'd have ample freakout time.

Needn't have worried.

Anyway, after having listened through the entire soundtrack to about every musical I own, I seem to have finally gotten everything figured out, to a manageable quantity, manageably-sized suitcases, and both of them well under the maximum weight limit for AmAir.

You may think by now that I must be a very slow packer. This is because when I listen to musicals, I must stop and devote adequate attention to every good song, of which there are several, so I really end up packing during the reprises and singing over half the time instead.

I also swung by EdAbroad...yet again...the other day during the courthouse bomb scare (?) and picked up my insurance card. Also photocopied any document that might even be remotely useful to have a photocopy of. Factor in packing, and there's really not much left to do but leave.

Five days.

Amazing how a figure like that gives everything a certain ceremonial quality. I found myself going to bed last night thinking "that was my last Thursday in the US until June." Okay, for those of you who don't know me, that's WEIRD. I do not think things like "this is my last Thursday" anywhere, until anything. Anyway, I find myself savoring things as simple as a turkey sandwich. It's familiar. And when you're about to take one giant trans-continental leap, familiar means more than it used to.

Was that strangely metaphorical? Yikes, let's yank this back towards objective reporting, here.

I'm hoping that all this insane precipitation means that things will be smooth sailing as far as airports go, because frankly getting over there is way scarier to me than living there. And I can just picture someone with my luck getting to the airport, and then twelve inches of snow all spontaneously dropping out of the sky, and landing on the runway with one enormous "whump"ing noise. Err...hopefully not.

On the off-chance that I don't get around to updating again until I'm there, here's the plan, for those of you who expressed interest in what the plan was.

Wednesday around noon, I take off from Columbus
Connect in Dallas Wednesday evening
Arrive in Charles de Gaulle (Paris, basically...) Thursday morning.
Thursday will be spent with Kristin, James, Megan, and Jenna randomly wandering about Paris and breaking in the feel of being totally out of place
Thursday night spent in Paris
Leave by TGV train and connect to Avignon on Friday morning/afternoon
Friday evening spent with the group in a hotel in Avignon
Move in with Danielle on Saturday.

Since I'm still in the states, I'm going to adhere to the non-F-word paragraph custom and talk about...random things. I sold back my books yesterday and for the first time in five quarters of college, the book store took all of them back. That was pretty cool. Also, I have now officially listened to my Sweeney Todd CD enough times that it's skipping. Hopefully my Original London Cast version will get here before I leave for that F-word that I won't say in this paragraph. I figured that the cinema version and the broadway are different enough, plus Mrs. Potts definitely plays Mrs. Lovett on the Original London. Mrs. Potts has a name other than the name of the animated teapot she plays in story and song, but I call her Mrs. Potts anyway.

Still no word on grades, and that only worries me because of the impossibly crazy mythology final. Wouldn't be the end of the world to have done not-quite-mediocre on it, but if that single test drags my GPA down, the English department and I are no longer on speaking terms.

I suppose I'll bring this random collection of random thoughts to a completely un-segued ending. Otherwise I'll just let my mind wander, and the resulting text would be neither interesting nor of any value to anyone...

...five days.

-G