Here goes nothing...

Anyone who knows me, knows I hate packing. Anyone who knows me even better should be really impressed that I'm this organized more than 12 hours before my flight. Let the packing (and travel) begin!

Less Than One Week

Really though, how nervous and anxious can I actually be if I decided last week to extend my trip by 10 days so I can do a tiny bit of traveling after the program ends? Added bonus: it looks like Continental didn't end up charging me the $200-something change fee?! Next week I'll be waking up in New Delhi. I don't want to talk about how little Hindi I know.

I figure I should backtrack a little bit and actually explain what I'll be doing for the semester. No, I will not be working in a call center (as I was (jokingly) asked by a friend of my parents' as I was designated-driving them to their New Year's Eve dinner party). I will be participating in this program on Sustainable Development and Social Change. This includes a homestay, intensive Hindi, educational excursions, and an independent study project for the last month of the program, where I'll hopefully do something related to fair trade. I'll also be in Jaipur during an elephant festival and Holi. Sadly, I'm just missing the Jaipur Book Festival (you can read about it in this week's Newsweek. Actually you probably can't, because everyone and their mother (literally!) has given me a copy of this article to read), which ends today. Candice Bushnell was one of the speakers. I think that would take the prize of one of the most bizarre celebrity encounters ever.

In the meantime, I've been keeping myself (somewhat) occupied by reading a lot of books (I think I'm halfway through my 7th of the break?), doing a lot of yoga, practicing Hindi, visiting my brother at the University of Chicago (where everyone thought I was his little sister), taking advantage of the summer weather do-over, writing cover letters and applying for internships for the summer, and working on my honors thesis proposal. Figuring out the distant future makes the immediate future less intimidating.

Anxious Beginnings

I woke up at 8 on the dot this morning, panicked and anxious. I had been having a dream in which I was going through a list of everything I needed for India, and was becoming more and more anxious by the second when the "Things I Need" column on the list far exceeded the "Things I Have" column. Upon waking up I naturally grabbed the first notebook and pen I could find and began to compose a real-life version of said list. Thankfully, the "Things I Have" column is longer in real life, though as the day goes on things to add to the "Things I Need" column keep popping up (Yoga this morning, I was in downward facing dog looking at my feet: I need a nail kit.). However making a list is a huge step foreword in me actually being able to visualize myself packing up and moving to India until May.

I really wanted to start this blog on a positive, optimistic note about how excited I am to be going to Jaipur next semester and what an amazing experience it's going to be. While all of those things are true, what I've been feeling most prominently is more on the anxiety and terror side of things than the excited and ecstatic side. So here it is: I'm terrified. I'm anxious. There have been a few points where I've said, "I don't want to go anymore." I wonder why I didn't pick somewhere easier to go, somewhere where I speak the language or at least read the alphabet. Or somewhere that I'm a little more familiar with, like East Africa.

Why am I throwing myself so far out of my comfort zone? Because I can't imagine next semester any other way. I can't see myself back at Wheaton. I can't see myself in the UK, Denmark, or another European country (though no offense to my mother or anyone else who has studied abroad in one of those countries...they all seem like lovely places that I'd like to visit someday). I know that this is something I need to do, and I think I'm terrified and anxious because this Big Life Decision is quickly taking shape.

There are a million questions I have running through my head that revolve primarily around what and what not to bring that I really wish someone could answer for me but that I will ultimately have to answer for myself (Should I bring my stuffed panda that I've had since birth with me?). I'm using my time in Tanzania this past June as a frame of reference, but I keep having to remind myself that this isn't 3 weeks...it's 3 1/2 months. I think this is mainly because I haven't quite figured out how to think about going to India yet. Am I moving there for a semester? Or am I just visiting? Obviously the former implies a much bigger commitment and is also the category I'm beginning to frame next semester in.

So, in a little more than 13 days I will find my jet-lagged, too-tired/filled-with-adrenaline-to-be-anxious-anymore self here, the Pink City itself:

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/krates/2214143189/)