My Adventure Has Begun!

So here I am, about one hour into my flight to Philadelphia, which will later connect to Paris. I’m planning on copy and pasting this into Blogspot when we land in Philly...The past few days have been a whirlwind! Besides eating as much Mexican food and In-N-Out as I could, I kept pretty busy with preparations and goodbyes. After finishing work and our end of the summer festivities on Saturday, I volunteered to spend a few hours making Thank You posters for Orientation and delivering them all over campus (In a golf cart!! So fun!) on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday, I went and bought all of my Travelers Cheques, along with some Euros, which was pretty exciting! Too bad it cost $154 to buy €100!!

Yesterday, I began my day by cleaning up the leftovers of my last night in Isla Vista, which was a really fun night. After I got a haircut and fed all the food in my fridge/cabinets to Chip, Joe, and Fei, my parents arrived at my apartment and we began to pack up my life. After a few hours, we headed out, and stopped at Goleta Beach on our way to the 101. There, I started thinking about how it was the last time I’d be at the Pacific Ocean for 10 months, and I completely lost it. We got back in the car and I cried all the way to Ventura.

We made our way to Los Angeles last night, and woke up early this morning to make it to the airport by 6, where we met my travel buddy, Ora, from UCSD, who will be studying with me in Lyon. Although it was very hard to leave my friends and my home in Santa Barbara, and my parents this morning at LAX, I’m really excited to be in Paris in about 12 hours!

OK, scratch that. It’s now about 4:10am Paris time (7:10pm Cali time), and we’re somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. My flight is scheduled to arrive at 8:00am (it left at about 12:30am Paris time), so I’d say we’re about halfway through. I couldn’t get a hold of any wireless internet in Philadelphia, so by the time I post this blog and you all read it, I will be in Paris! Being in the international terminal in Philly was strange, as half of our flight is French speaking, so each announcement made in the airport and on the plane is in both French and English. I’m trying to get used to hearing French again, but apparently 2 months of speaking and hearing nothing but English – and a lot of it! – has made me a little rusty.

I’ve spent both flights watching episodes of The Office, reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower (which I just finished) and reading my guide to French culture and etiquette book. But what I really need to do is sleep, since when we land in 3 and ½ hours, the day will have just begun!