Pre-Departure Jitters

It's nearly 2 weeks before D-Day (Destination Italia-Day). It's truly crunch time and I'm forced to seriously realize beyond my fantasies that oh yeah, I'll be living in the heart of Florence, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in two flipping weeks. Hard to describe the feelings that thought provokes...I've been planning for this trip since I was a girl and would hear stories of my best friend Rachel's summers in Italy with her family. Lucky bitch. But that sparked the idea and I knew when I chose Chapman three years ago that I would be here someday. I wanted to play DIII softball for this reason. Men that I've seriously dated for the past two years have broken up with me over it. This is the real deal. Serious shit. A semester in Italy. Gotta prepare to live the dream.

After reading other friends blogs when they were abroad and my roomie Laura's while she was in SAS for the summer, I knew that this venue was the perfect one to keep in touch with everyone back in the States. This blog business takes a while to figure out though, sheesh! In any case I promise from this point on to update this blog as much as possible during my travels! I owe that much to all of my lovely family and friends back home that I will miss like crazy! So please if you read this, follow and comment at will, if I don't email you, go on facebook often enough, or BBM you, this is the ideal way of contact. Also if you're interested in mailing me via snail mail (which we all know is my favorite, there is nothing quite like receiving a surprise letter from a dear friend in their own handwriting!) then I just received my address abroad and upon request I can email you that! My parents are super sketch about this whole blogging experience and want me to be as careful as possible, so that was me indulging them...

But back to the matter at hand. Italy. In two weeks my adventures and shenanigans will begin in Florence and will likely extend all over Europe if I'm lucky and my extremely limited funds allow it. Rome, Venice, Lucca, Pisa, Sicily, the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii, Milan, Zurich, Prague, Munich, Oktoberfest, Amsterdam, Budapest, Nice, Montecarlo, the French Riviera, Madrid, Barcelona, Croatia, London, Dublin, Scotland, etc...sweet baby Jesus I've got a lot of places that I want/need/yearn to see, I only pray I can see a large portion of them! So those are the goals. I mean, there's that whole studying and going to class thing I can't forget about too...but who am I kidding, that's not the point, that's just an additional experience. Although my two fun classes, wine tasting and italian cooking, are bound to benefit me greatly during my stay :)

So here I am still at home, while everyone is already off to college, I work to save money and prepare for the trip of a lifetime. Gah! Just typing that is freaking me out, I can definitely chalk up scared/freaked to my growing list of current feelings, although I'll never tell my parents that...it's just pre-departure jitters, and when it comes down to it, lets face it, I'm just STOKED!!!

I apologize for my long-windedness of the moment but since this is my first post, might as well write as much as I can!

Ciao for now,
Jessica