One Week till liftoff

Hello, world! Rather, Bonjour, mes amis! It is Sunday, September 16th and, with the creation of this new blog, I announce to you that I am leaving for France in exactly one week to begin my nine-month stay. Actually, in exactly one week minus one hour and 23 minutes I will have departed Newark airport in New Jersey for the runways of the CDG in Paris. Paris. Paris, France.

Holy whoa.

I intend to write my first impressions, my fears, my surprises, my loves, my dislikes, and my experiences in France. Thanks to the WWW I will be able to write down all of these thoughts and attitudes almost as quickly as I feel them and think them which is to benefit you, dear reader, as the recipient of every single thing going on in my brain! Hurrah! I'm so looking forward to a life post-college in France but I also have so much anxiety that I am going to pour out my heart and my lil' soul onto this thing for the world to view. Hopefully it will be full of humorous anecdotes for the most part as well as "they have THAT in France?" and other such exclamations.

However, as much as I am excited about this new blog as a way to stay in touch with those back home and as a way to remember all my stories a few years from now, I must also remember that writing in this thing cannot take over my life. Staying online and checking out nerve.com is fun, as is writing my every thought down, but the whole point of going to France is to live there, to be in it, to make a place for myself there. Wish me luck, everyone!

So yes, I'm going to try to write an amusing/informative/helpful/insightful blog of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in France. And my pictures of the country and my travels elsewhere are to be posted on http://picasaweb.google.com/emily.findley. All very straight forward, easy to use, and hopefully very cool.

My life pre-France is currently full of nervousness and planning, packing and buying (gotta put a stop on the buying - I must remember that they do have stores in France!), as well as visiting and picture-taking and holing up in my room trying to figure out where to put everything. My goal since I got home to EL has been to box up my room and put it in the basement so that all my stuff is ready to be shipped wherever it is that I intend to live post-France and this has been a labor-intensive and interesting projet - I found a marionnette that I've had for the longest time that I thought I had hid from myself and it still scares the crap out of me. I've found love letters from high school boyfriends and poems that Lisa wrote me and friendship bracelet string that I never turned into arm jewelry. I've also inhaled more dust in the past few weeks just from moving all my junk as to cause alarm and the occasional mental request to get an inhaler. I've been to church to see my All Saints family, I had one last trip up North to Glen Lake, and I had an amazing weekend of fun on the west side of the state with my family on the weekend the midwest decided to flood.

Now I have two days before I leave for New York - yup, I'm hitting the Big Apple pre-France in an attempt to see all of the friends I made this summer and to volunteer one last time at God's Love We Deliver (plug: www.godslovewedeliver.org). I'll be working at the gym and going to Lion's Head and traversing the city and having a wonderful, English-filled time before I land in France. I just found out that my ISIC card (International Student Identity Card from STA travel) can get me some pretty freaking sweet discounts to museums in New York like the Jewish History Museum. If I can get my butt out of bed while I'm there I'd really like to hit that up.

In the meantime, I plan on not sleeping (due to anxiety) for the next few nights, visiting Ann Arbor and my loves over there one last time, going out to lunch with some amazing church family, and baking cookies. Got my visa, my passport, my documents saying that I'm an English teaching assistant in Sorgues, and all my tickets (two plane tickets, one train ticket), and a couch to crash on once I get to the south of the country. I think I'm pretty set.

Fingers crossed, everyone... it's about to get crazy!