The Adventure Begins ... Soon

I have this problem with surrealism. No, not the art movement. With things being surreal for me. How in the world has time passed so that I'm going into my fourth year of college? How could it be time for me to start looking for grad schools? How could it be the middle of June and time for me to go do my study abroad?

The adventure actually began already. How so, do you ask? Well, we had fun looking for my ticket. A packet was mailed out on Friday, June 6 from the study abroad agency, located in the state of Connecticut. Express, 2-day mail through UPS. I watched and waited eagerly for this packet. For a week, I saw no sign of it. I emailed my study abroad adviser, relaying this distressing news. She got back to me yesterday. "Well, UPS says it was delivered, so look harder. Maybe they put it in a bush so that no one would find it." A bush, eh? Well, I looked harder. Still didn't find it. So I emailed her again last night, like she told me to do if the packet was not found. She called emailed this morning, sent me the tracking number. Sure enough, UPS said it had been delivered to our front door last Monday. Emailed the adviser one more time to tell her the packet must have been thoroughly lost. Dad told me he thought he remembered putting something on my bed, or telling my brother to put something on my bed. Then he wasn't sure if he'd put it on my bed or meant to, or put it there and then picked it up again to put it somewhere more important. Well, I hadn't seen anything on my bed in the last week except for bed stuff, and I changed my sheets over the weekend. Frustrated, I sat down to do the finishing on an afghan I just finished, and I saw a corner of something sticking out from under the old rocking chair.

Of course that was it. Why would I bother writing this whole long post if it weren't? The poor adviser, dealing with so many frantic emails and calls from me. But the ticket is found.

Which means it's now packing phase. Just about all my toiletries are packed, but that's not hard, because most of them stay packed, anyways. Part of the reason why I'm not packed yet is because I looked at my suitcase. Yes, I looked at it! I can pack perfectly fine for a week with my suitcase, and since we have washing facilities available to us, I'm fine with washing those clothes and re-wearing them. The problem comes if I want to bring anything home. If I'm gone for a week, I can accumulate enough stuffs to fill odd crannies in my luggage, both checked and carry on. But I'm going to be in four different countries, gone for four weeks. I'm gonna need more room. Solution? Ask Dad to borrow a suitcase of his that's a bit larger, so that I can have more leeway. He gave it to me, too. I think I have ... about 3 extra square inches, and there isn't a nice pocket on the inside of the lid like I'm used to. So I'll probably do a trial run tonight with my packing, and if I don't think it will be enough, we'll keep searching the house for one that calms my fears.