departure date: three months!

in exactly three months, i will be in prague, czech republic!

well, at least i hope so. i decided on my walk back from chinese house that instead of reviewing my econ notes or reading the body and society for my early christianities class, i would create a blog in preparation for my semester abroad. all of this is a little presumptuous because i have a long way to go before i actually make it to europe. some things that have to be done first (in no particular order):

1) get my long-term schengen visa and my passport back.
2) buy a plane ticket - first to go from new york to seoul, then another plane ticket to go from seoul to prague.
3) somehow survive finals week (which will include five papers and a presentation).
4) figure out what to do with all my belongings (storage?) and also figure out how to pack for eight months into two suitcases since my mom shot down the idea of me buying another suitcase.
5) hopefully pass an econ exam next week which covers a whole lot of material i don't understand.
...
among other things.

anyhow. i did want to write a couple things to start off my euroblog on a positive note. first, i don't speak a lot of czech (and by that i mean i know how to say hello, yes, and please) but i did look up a phrase that i hope means what google translate says it means. nový začátek - it is supposed to mean "new start," which is exactly what a semester abroad will be! junior year has been stressful, insanely challenging, and definitely unexpected in more ways than one. as much as i love wesleyan, i think spending a semester away will put a lot of things into perspective and help me get my life together (as in come back senior year knowing what i want to do with my life). yes, it's a tall order but hey, one can dream. to be honest i can't really picture my life away from wes for an entire semester so i don't know how i'll feel three months from now when i'm settling into a new country as opposed to returning to my room in fauver. i can list about 8012391023123090 things i'll miss about wes but i won't.

it's funny to think that four years ago, i was a junior in high school - it's been four years since i moved back to seoul and was a junior at korea international school at our gaepo campus. four years since nerdstorm and ap calculus with mr. davis. four years since mr. webster's ap lit class with four people, reading hamlet and missing the forest in sylvia plath's poetry. four years ago, i was writing novel-length emails to claudia, nina, and kim on a regular basis. it doesn't feel like it was that long ago, but here i am, twenty years old and three months away from spending an entire semester in a foreign country. really, i can't believe that. so much has changed in four years. i never considered being a religion major, never thought i would spend an entire summer in montana (never thought i would even go to montana), and always assumed i would be abroad in france. i can't wait to see what life in prague is like, and i can't wait to look back four years from now and see how things are. i was sixteen when i was in seoul. i'll be twenty-one in prague. who knows where i'll be when i'm twenty-five?

well. i have not been having a whole lot of luck with the czech consulate, to say the least, so i will keep my fingers crossed that my student visa situation will be processed and returned to me in a timely fashion. by that, i mean two months because it takes up to sixty days. in the meantime, i am going to try to balance my workload and keep that lonely planet guide to the czech/slovak republics in my bag to read about castles and churches and much more. there are a lot of other places in the czech republic that i want to visit - there are apparently a lot of hikes/nature trails so i really want to visit those places in the spring. also, my friend julie (that i met this summer in montana) is in paris all year studying at sciences po so i'm already planning a trip to see her in april during my spring break. other places i want to visit include germany, poland, austria, italy, hungary (we'll be going to budapest on our overnight trip), switzerland, and more. i'm hoping to stay in europe an extra week after my program ends on may 21 and i want to go to zagreb or maybe even fly to greece! we'll see :)

for now, i'm still in middletown, ct. time to go back to hypothesis testing and confidence intervals.