Three(ish) days

Yikes I'm super nervous. Still haven't packed!! My mom promised that she'd help me... let's see. But she did let me go shopping in her closet, always fun and today I got four pairs of jeans, three sweaters, and two shirts out of it, so I'd say it was quite successful.

Also, insurance companies need to learn that going away for a year doesn't mean that they can give me a prescription for two months. Seriously -- what am I supposed to do two months from now when I need meds? I know that my mom can mail it to me, but it requires a lot of planning and time, which is not really our family's collective forte.

Tomorrow I'm seeing the whole fam as a kind of goodbye before heading off to Paris on Monday. It'll be nice to see most of everyone - and introduce Julian to my family. I hope they don't bite his head off.

I was supposed to sleep around 11, it's now almost 1am. That's how you can tell I'm nervous. I'm tired of hearing people say, "But it's Paris," whenever I say that I'm scared, or nervous, or panicking a little. It's still far away, it's still all on my own, it's still a foreign country, even if I can sorta speak the language.

I've been watching French movies and reading French news magazines to prepare. I watched "Le Dieu est grande, et je suis toute petite" today. It was interesting; about a young woman whose boyfriend is Jewish, so she learns about the religion as she herself is spiritually lost. It was very real how her desire to learn shapes and distorts their relationship. She grappled with some issues that I think I have struggled with myself.

Anyway. I hope to be somewhat packed by tomorrow. I don't want to spend my last day in NYC going through my closet.

Four days!

So, finally got my visa (still have to get my residency permit - seriously?), and have yet to start my packing. I also have to run a whole bunch of errands - picking up things like adapters, toiletries, euros, etc.

Saying goodbye to people is the worst. And seeing all my friends going back to school, and realizing that I'm really not going with them is harder than I imagined. Now that studying in France for a year has finally become real to me, all the other things that come with are real, too. The fear of the unknown is normal, but for someone who is terrible at transitions, it is almost paralyzing. But I'm going, no holds barred. I guess I'll eventually figure it out.