Oh my god I am leaving in 14 hours for my semester abroad. I am about to vomit with a mixture of excitement and fear that I will turn up and my credit cards will all be shut off or something. Lena has helped by putting the image in my mind of me dying on a plane from eating peanuts, which helps a ton when I think of all the other dying-on-a-plane fears I have.
I was pretty relieved to find out that I'm hooking up with the other people in my group (hah!) in Frankfurt to catch the flight to Florence, because that means I can split a cab to wherever once we get there. Not very reassuring that I don't know where I'm going once I hit the Florence airport. However, reassured that I don't have to take a cab by myself, as cabs are my second least favorite mode of transportation (guess what is first? hint: planes.)
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So, I thought paring down my book collection to come to North Carolina was bad, choosing the clothes to bring to Europe is significantly worse - although once I finish that, it will surely quickly lose its title to "paring down the North Carolina Book Collection (currently at 33 unread books) to 9 Novels to Entertain Me as I Come Down from My Internet Addiction in Florence." Over the past couple of days I have been throwing clothes on top of my suitcase, but today was the first time I actually packed them. With about 1/4 of my suitcase left free, without having thrown in toiletries or all of my textbooks/papers, I decided I might be overpacking. That is, if I want to bring back more than a pair of Eiffel Tower earrings.
So now I'm down to fifteen pieces of clothing: 3 skirts, 5 shirts, 2 cardigans, 1 trench coat, 2 pairs of shoes, a pair of jeans, and my black dress. Considering how ridiculous, sometimes flashy, other times childish, I look most of the time, I'm hoping taking so few clothes, all mix-matchable, will teach me how to dress well without having to be constantly over the top. Understated but fashionable.
This baby will be getting a lot of play.
Also if I run out of things to wear/decide that miniskirts in december are dumb, it's not like Paris and Florence are the worst places to pick up some threads.
All and all, I think I'm excited? Mostly I'm just nervous. I've never traveled by myself, at least to the point of ending up somewhere unfamiliar and having to figure everything out on my own. The good news is that large chunks of my Italian are coming back, although they're mostly strange grammatical things and napolitano curse words.
Anyway (look at how all of the last few paragraphs start with "a" words), I am going to keep this blog as non-"study abroad experience"-y as possible. It might become a fashion blog - the many ways you can remix gap and american apparel basics. Or a food blog. Or a blog about how disenchanted I am with everything. Oh wait, that's what it already is.
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Later that evening...
Have moved on to book selection, thrown out three books of the initial elite eight for having too few words-per-page. Damn you, Sarah Vowell! I need less than a pica between lines, man. I'm now reconsidering my relationship with books like Middlemarch and The Feminine Mystique, both which pack a considerable number of pages and words for their book volume.
Nah.
In the end, I will end up switching out Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper for Botany of Desire, despite its words-to-volume ratio, end up committing to Take the Cannoli and Chocolat anyway, reneging over the same w2v concern as Botany, and pick up The Handmaid's Tale along the way. The final list will look like this, which is to say that with ten minutes left before I leave for the airport, I will take out one, even two, in the interest of bringing back another pair of shoes:
+ Chocolat, Joanne Harris
+ Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell
+ The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
+ The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
+ Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
+ The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
+ Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins
+ The Best American NonRequired Reading 2008
+ Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
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The next morning...
Pollan's down! Chocolat? Handmaid's Tale? You're next.
2 comments:
"Lena has helped by putting the image in my mind of me dying on a plane from eating peanuts, which helps a ton when I think of all the other dying-on-a-plane fears I have."
Hey, to be fair this was my attempt at convincing you to keep your medication where you could feasibly access it.
HAVE FUN!! I'm going to miss you loads but I know you're going to have an amaaaazing time! Meanwhile, I will write papers and contemplate how I will find a job in a year. Ahahaha. : )
i think revolutionary road is a good book to read in europe.
i didnt know you were studying abroad! all of my friends who have studied abroad come back with really nice fashion sense. i'm jealous.
post about everything! i want to know everrrrrything!
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