In seven days, I will board my plane from Charlotte to JFK. I will then retrieve my bags and continue to endure what I've heard will be a grueling security screening. Then I will board my 11 hour El Al flight to Tel Aviv with other US students studying at Hebrew U. In eight days, I will land at Ben Gurion airport seven time zones away from my home. I will get a shuttle from Tel Aviv to Hebrew U's Mount Scopus campus. I will promptly move into my room in a five-bedroom apartment that I will be sharing with 4 other people I don't know. At some point I will have some sort of an orientation that will include a trip to the local supermarket where I will buy everything that I will need that I don't plan on bringing (which is a whole lot of stuff). In nine days, I begin my first Hebrew class. Of all these things that will happen in these three days, it was my friend Molly mentioning that I start learning Hebrew in nine days that really jumpstarted my pre-departure panic.
However, this isn't a true anxiety attack level of panic. It is simply me getting hit in the head with the fact that this trip is really happening. I've been waiting for four years for this to happen, and it's actually almost here! My panic level is just catching up to my excitement level. I've been pretty fluid and flexible throughout this process. It seems like everyone else around me is stressing about me going to the Middle East for 6 months, but I haven't really been worried. I've had more than enough people ask me if it's safe enough for me to go. My answer: In the words of the beloved Hillary Duff, who just happened to come up in my iTunes tonight, "Why not take a crazy chance?" Just about anyone who knows me knows my strong sense of adventure. I just count this as one of the biggest adventures I've had so far in my life. I plan to fully enjoy this one and continue with more adventures after this one ends.
I'm not really sure what I had planned for this blog post when I began writing, but it has become what I expect many future ones to also be: a collection of musings, tangents, random thoughts, and sometimes just a stream of consciousness.
Hopefully if you have subscribed to the blog, you will receive a notification. Let me know if you thought you subscribed but didn't receive a notification of some sort. I'll try to get it figured out. Thanks for reading!
However, this isn't a true anxiety attack level of panic. It is simply me getting hit in the head with the fact that this trip is really happening. I've been waiting for four years for this to happen, and it's actually almost here! My panic level is just catching up to my excitement level. I've been pretty fluid and flexible throughout this process. It seems like everyone else around me is stressing about me going to the Middle East for 6 months, but I haven't really been worried. I've had more than enough people ask me if it's safe enough for me to go. My answer: In the words of the beloved Hillary Duff, who just happened to come up in my iTunes tonight, "Why not take a crazy chance?" Just about anyone who knows me knows my strong sense of adventure. I just count this as one of the biggest adventures I've had so far in my life. I plan to fully enjoy this one and continue with more adventures after this one ends.
I'm not really sure what I had planned for this blog post when I began writing, but it has become what I expect many future ones to also be: a collection of musings, tangents, random thoughts, and sometimes just a stream of consciousness.
Hopefully if you have subscribed to the blog, you will receive a notification. Let me know if you thought you subscribed but didn't receive a notification of some sort. I'll try to get it figured out. Thanks for reading!
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