A rather belated “pre-departure” post

Technically, I was supposed to write this, my “pre-departure entry,” before, well, departing, but, as some of my friends will attest, I tend to fall off the face of the earth whenever I return home for breaks. Most attempts to reach me, be it by Facebook, text message, phone call, or email, are sucked somehow into a kind of communication black hole that seems to descend around me as soon as I step off the plane in Kansas City. In fact, some of my friends still tease me for the psychic agony—and yes, I assure you, it was agony—I endured after returning to Georgetown my freshman year following Christmas break having not checked my email once. It is not an experience to repeat, my friends!

As you might have already guessed, I have indeed departed not only from Kansas but from the United States for only my second time abroad, and since my departure, I’ve been increasingly haunted, first by my own guilty conscience, but more recently, by the inquiries of friends and family members.  So, for those who have asked, here it is—my pre-departure post from Paris, the first post in a series of reflections on my life away from Kansas and Washington DC.

I suppose this post is coming when it is primarily because before Sunday—read: before the “fasten your seatbelts” sign started flashing on my first flight from Kansas City to Dallas—none of this seemed real. Of course, I’d done all of the requisite pre-international travel preparation; I’d gotten photocopies of my vaccination history, printed extra passport photographs, and, most importantly, obtained my student visa, but even as my imminent departure loomed ever closer, I crammed thoughts of Paris somewhere in the back of my mind. I did this not because I wasn’t excited—I was, and remain, incredibly excited for my time here in Paris—but really, because I was nervous. So much was going to change—I was going to change—and change, even positive, incredibly exciting change, tends to be, at least at first, difficult.

So, I employed some of my master avoidance techniques, spending the majority of my break with my nose in a book, playing nail-biter backgammon games with my youngest brother, Patrick, and generally floating about with my head in the clouds, as I tend to do. Even Saturday night, the night before my morning departure, I spent my evening not surveying my packing choices—at that point, still unfinished; I had to wake up very early to shove a few last minute things into suitcase pockets— or consulting my guide books, instead, two of my younger brothers and I toppled the “Jenga” tower several times and then played a version of the Scrabble-like game “Bananagrams” in a way that can only be described as veering toward the XXX. (We dubbed it “Slang Bananagrams,” and believe me, it is not a game for the faint of heart.)

Somehow, even despite my avoidance techniques, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle in one piece, managed to find my  host father amidst swarms of harried travelers at the airport, and have been living life à la parisienne ever since. Of course,  I’ll have more on that in future posts!