I haven’t really had time to process this trip yet. I have had my head down trying to get through this week, studying and working on projects right up until 10 am today when I finished my midterm in Arch History. It’s only now while I sit in the Knowlton Library waiting for 12:30 to come that the full realization of the experience we’re all about to have is washing over me. It is a wave of refreshing relaxation to finally have nothing standing between me and this momentous trip. At the same time however, the bliss of oncoming relaxation in paradise is mingled with fear of the radical newness of this impending experience.
I’ve never been out of North America. I’ve never been somewhere that the majority of people don’t speak my language. Those are some scary propositions for me, but they are thresholds I have been wanting to cross since I was young. It is such an intoxicating blend of terror and excitement, thrilling, to be leaving the world of intellectual speculation about the world from a distance to actually being in it. I feel so young, so ready to have impressions made on my mind and heart.
I think this is the great contradiction of preparing to travel; the total release and relaxation of having the bags packed and the world ready to swallow you, swirled together with the gut-fear that comes before the leap. I will relish it for these next 90 minutes.
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Bags Packed: Relaxation/Butterflies in the Knowlton Library.