LEAVING!

Despite the winter wonderland that is Virginia right now, I am currently sitting in the airport at Richmond, and about to board my flight to Philadelphia. From Philadelphia, I go to Frankfort, and from Frankfort to Praaaaaague! I'm slightly sleep deprived, which I'll explain in more detail in a subsequent post, but suffice to say I've had a fantastic last couple of days before leaving. Perfect send-off. This flight is actually overbooked, so I'm going to cut this short go get a place early in the line. The worst thing ever would be getting stuck here after miraculously making it this far (and believe me, it IS a miracle I got here, because Virginians as a general population freak out when the snow covers the grass. And they also don't plow highways in a hurry.)

Packing is Overrated.

SO, I haven't packed yet, but I HAVE developed this super cool blog page! 
The first order of business is to give fair warning for anyone who intends to keep up with me through this blog: all previous life attempts to keep up a regular blog/diary/running-log/pen-pal correspondence/anything else that involves regular updates has failed miserably. So if blog entries just randomly stop like 3 weeks after I arrive in Prague, this blog can be predictably added to the aforementioned succession of failures. That said, I am going to try my hardest to deliver regular updates, starting with my present situation.

My situation is something like this:

I'm scheduled to fly out of RIC at about 1pm on Sunday morning. In theory, this would mean that I have at least a full day to pack my currently empty suitcase. 

ENTER: Travel-Hindering Snow

The Weather Channel estimates that sometime tonight we'll start getting inch-upon-inch of snow. Thanks, weather, for failing to deliver much in the way of snow to Virginia over the past like ten years and deciding to make up for it this year. Great timing. 

So.. the weather could present an obstacle to getting out of the country on time, but there's not too much I can do as far as that goes except to finish packing as soon as possible, leave sometime tomorrow for Richmond (hopefully beating any travel-hindering snow) and spend the night near the airport. 

I'm going to miss UR this semester, a lot more than I anticipated when I decided to go abroad this spring. But I feel like that's mostly a good thing. It means that even if I fall in love with Prague, which is somethingI fully intend to do, I'll have senior year to look forward to when I come home. AHHHH EXCITEMENT! I really am excited. 

There are definitely a few things on my "nervous" list that I'll be glad to get rid of, including: getting to the airport, remembering everything important, finding the person who's supposed to pick me up once I get to Prague, having the right clothes packed for Prague weather, meeting everyone in the study abroad group, finding the Fulbright internship office and figuring out exactly what I'll be doing there, etc. The good news about that is that most of it will be figured out within the first couple weeks. 

Ok, packing calls (otherwise I won't be able to justify going to dinner at Perini's with mom at 7)!