Packing

Sixteen hours from now, I will be in America. My strategy for this one is to stay up all night packing, take advantage of the fact that Air France will serve me wine, down a demi-bouteille as I board, and sleep for the duration of my flight and any potential delays. I'm pretty excited to see how it goes.

I'm in a slightly better place than I was a few days ago, because I really can't wait to see my friends and family, but I won't pretend I don't still have my doubts about leaving this place for good. I keep telling myself that it's fine because I'll come back, but that doesn't really tell the whole story, since a lot of what I'll miss won't be here this summer, or next year, or after graduation. I won't be able to stop by museums for 40 minutes because they're free with my student card, I won't be able to text my host mother that I won't be eating dinner at home because my friends and I decided to go to the best creperie in Paris, I won't get to wander the hallways of the Sorbonne and wonder how it's possible that I go to school there, I won't bump into my friends and classmates on the Champs-Elysees, I won't have a weekly Tuesday lunch date with five French friends, I won't be able to listen to Voltage (without question the best radio station in Paris) and have them announce "Beeyonce--Eef I Wear a Boi" and receive a text seconds later because a friend of mine is listening too...none of this can be recreated when I come back as a tourist. And most of my friends are going home soon too, so even if I stayed the year, nothing would be the same, but it doesn't stop us from planning the apartment near Chatelet we are all going to rent together and the non-profit we are going to start so we have an excuse to stick around.

Also, packing sucks. I cannot believe that I have accumulated so much crap. I'm just lucky it doesn't all have to come home right now or I would be in big trouble.

Okay, back to updating my iTunes and waiting for the sun to rise so I can go get my other suitcase out of the closet next to my host parents' bedroom. Home so soon!