With five days to go until I fly out (my first ever solo flight and it’s nine hours over an ocean, woohoo) most of my packing is done, or at least, I’ve stuffed my embarrassingly small sweater collection into a suitcase along with a few pairs of jeans and will likely procrastinate on the rest (chargers, shoes, makeup, etc.) until the day I leave.
At this point I’m spending my days alternating between binging British tv, jumping around the house with excitement (much to my family’s dismay), getting my fill of Orlando with my friends before we all leave for the semester, and generally wasting time trying to speed up the days until my flight on Tuesday.
Most of the time it doesn’t feel real, though every once and a while it will hit me at the most random times that I’m really and truly heading to London for a whole semester in the UK. For the most part though, I don’t think I’ll actually fully realize and accept that it’s happening until well into my first week or two abroad.
For now though, I just keep flipping through shock, excitement, anxiety, and impatience like stop motion. In the moments of excitement, I think about all the things I want to do while there. I think of the places I want to visit, the things I hope to learn, the work I hope to accomplish at my internship, the friends I hope to make…
The UK has been a distant dream for me my entire life, and with the reality less than a week away (and also, coincidently the twentieth anniversary of the Harry Potter series, which is a huge bonus for a Potterhead like me) I’m beyond excited. Harry Potter Tours, trips to Scotland, searching for (and unfortunately probably failing to find) Nessie, interning at a publishing company (another lifelong dream come true), exploring London, and generally soaking in the culture awaiting me across the pond…so much is just days away. Though I’m almost positive my first days will be full of long informational meetings, getting lost on the tube thanks to my generally abysmal sense of direction, and wandering like the confused tourist that I am through the streets, it will be followed by discovering and undoubtedly falling in love with the amazing World City of London.