Wow! What a crazy time! I leave for Germany in three days, on Monday. Can you believe that? I know that I am freaking out. I’m going to see the World Championships of Gymnastics, and I’ve been reading reports online of arrivals and podium training. It still hasn’t really hit me that I’m going to BE THERE watch team, all around, and event finals. I’m going to be there, actually WATCHING Vanessa Ferrari and Shawn Johnson duke it out (well, probably). Insanity. And then from there it’s straight on to London and my semester abroad, which is also this huge thing looming up in the distance. It’s so enormous, I really can’t wrap my mind around it. It’s all out of perspective . . . I just can’t picutre what it is going to be like to be living in London.
Pshew. Obviously, I have a lot of packing and preparing to do. Today I got travelers cheques and picked up a saucepan. I have most of my stuff laid out, the real task in going to be getting it all packed in properly to two suitcases and a trunk. Trust me, that is not very much for three months’ worth of stuff. I am NOT a light packer. I filled the entire bed of my dad’s truck last year when I moved into my dorm room. I’m taking the essentials; I have to have clothes, obviously, and things like soap and shampoo, I need school supplies and a pillow and a blanket, and shoes, a coat, scarves, hats, an umbrella, utensils for cooking, Advil and Band-Aids, a clock radio . . . . you get the picture. It’s a lot of stuff and I have absolutely no intentions whatever of buying stuff there, since everything costs more than twice as much due to the exchange rate. Forget that!
Since I’ve finished up my internship, I have this entire week off, and it is a good thing because I need a little bit of downtime. There’s been stuff I’ve been wanting to do all summer, such as play with my Sculpey clay and read a book. I’ve been pretty busy and haven’t been able to get a lot of that done. However, earlier this week I sat down and created a lovely little figurine. She’s wearing an eighteenth-century style dress, a robe a la polonaise. It turned out great. Here are two pictures (I took her outside and set her on a rock under the tree):
In other news, I was trying to go to the Maryland football game that’s tomorrow. It’s the home opener, and the only game I’ll be in the country for. But they won’t let me have a free student ticket! I’m studying abroad, so I don’t qualify!! I was pretty pissed, I have to admit. I have to wait until next year to go to a game. 
Speaking of UMD, they started classes on Wednesday. It’s a little weird to be up here and not down there starting classes with everyone else. It will really be strange to come back and not go back to the same dorm room and the same roommate since I kept 1109 Dorchester and Liz as my room and roommate for my first two years. I’m probably going to go to Courtyards, which is an off-campus university-run apartment complex. Will lived there, and it was pretty sweet.
Well, next time I write, it’ll probably be from abroad! Hasta luego.
