For the past week, I’ve been thinking I must have been absolutely mad to sign up to live in a foreign country for 10 months. A foreign country where I have no relatives, where they don’t speak English, and which is thousands of miles from home, no less. I’ve been trying over and over to envision my arrival in Poitiers, but once I get to the part where I’m in the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, my daydream goes a bit fuzzy. I know that I’m supposed to go to the train station and buy a ticket to Poitiers, then somehow manage to juggle my 25-lb carry-on, my 50-lb suitcase, and my 105-lb self onto the train. But other than that, I’m at a loss for what to expect. I feel like I’m gambling with my life, willfully throwing myself into the unknown. Thankfully, time has been courteous enough to speed up just as I have been having doubts. I leave on Sunday, so as of today I have just three more days in the US of A.
I googled the address of the dorm where I’m living the other day. Before, I had been planning to walk there to get a feel for the town and to save on cab fare. However, it turns out my dorm is about 40 minutes from the Poitiers train station. I’d need biceps of steel (and to be crazy) to attempt that walk. Cab it is!
I’m in my room, packing now. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pack one year of your entire life into one valise? Impossible. Or, impossible, as le French would say.
Well, wish me luck! I’ll keep you updated on how everything goes.
