T-35 hours

So I finally think I'm ready to go. After a summer of freaking out, a month of knowing my way's been paid, three weeks with my visa, two with my travel insurance, and one frantically packing, I'm finally almost ready to go. I've done so much shopping I think my head (bank account?) is about to explode (implode?), but things are finally falling together, if not all in one place. Just in time, as per usual, but then I tend to procrastinate like other people tend to breathe. Not that things don't get done, mind you - they always do, and as impeccably as I can manage - but deadlines over three weeks away tend to make my mind wander.

Tomorrow is the busy day, and there's going to hardly be time to breathe, let alone stray from my tight schedule. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm pretty anal retentive when it comes to my schedule, which is something I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to get over. I'm going to see a movie in the afternoon here in Dayton with friends, parking my car at my father's house in the early evening, going to another movie in the evening with friends, and finally headed back to Cincinnati where I'm going to throw everything that's not in suitcases into suitcases, probably messing up the awesome organization I've got going on at the moment, and finally try to sleep some before "the big day." The big day being a travel day, and generally a day for me to freak out about how unprepared I really am and how much I'm in over my head before the actual big day, which is orientation and when I get to meet my classmates and stop freaking out about whether or not I'm going to like my classmates and start freaking out about what my host family's going to be like.

There's a little of that now, but I'm guessing it'll go away with time and excitement. No one I know has gotten to do something this big before. Or at least for this long. Or at least they haven't told me about it. I have several friends that've been to Europe, but I feel like this is a little different, a little further away, a little more culturally distant than what other people I know have done. I'm sure that's some sort of exoticism, and that things won't really be as different as I'm trying not to think they will be, but it's still a big step for me. Out the cultural comfort zone, I suppose, and into the... well, I'm not exactly sure what it'll be, and like I said, I'm trying not to take any preconceptions with me. A noble goal, if impossible to do. Regardless, the excitement is outweighing the apprehension for now. Let's hope it stays that way, shall we?