Getting ready...

So, dear friends and family, I know that I promised you I would not start a blog, due to the rather unfortunate horrible dullness of the last one I attempted to write, but I am already having adventures and couldn't imagine not sharing them with you. As I am horrible with phones and only slightly better with e-mail, and won't be able to obsessively text as I will, indeed, be in another country, this seemed like the best choice. Better than a massive e-mail thread and repeating stories 33 times, anywho.

So, I'm off to Israel tomorrow evening! This evening was filled with goodbye/talk to you soon conversations with good friends. Then, of course, came the requisite Elisa-packing-crisis. It started benignly with "M., what shoes do I bring?" and escalated into a full on debate with my family about the books I was bringing. My sister and I scoured the house looking for choices, then I covered a table, loudly interrupting my mother's quiet dessert time, and began moving the books around frantically, trying to decide between what would fit, what I would want to read in the next 4 1/2 months and what I want to read now/am reading.

An hour and a half later, I am sitting back at home. With a Nook on my lap. Indeed. I just bought a Nook. WHAT?

Haha, so there begins my adventures, with a rather expensive purchase, the decision made 15 minutes before Barnes and Noble closed, with my sister and I attempting not to freak out. She chose the case for me (forced) and we walked out with big grins. I shook her hand, "Sorry, my hands are kind of sweaty," she said. "Adrenaline rush!" I clicked my heels in the parking lot and then shouted "What the fuck did I just do?" Luckily, I will no longer be lugging 8 books with me around the world.

So tomorrow at 4 PM I leave for the airport with full family in tow. I get on the plane around 8, get into London the next morning. Spend 10 hours there doing goodness knows what, get back on a plane and will find myself, exhausted, frazzled and probably kind of gross, in Israel at 5:30 in the morning. Quick time change explanation: I am 9 hours ahead of anybody in CO, 7 hours ahead of all you East Coasters. Then I'll have to figure out how to board and explain (without really knowing myself) how to get to Hebrew University's campus. I will register, get my room assignment, settle down and...What the future brings, nobody knows!

My program works like this: I take 2 religion-focused classes at Rothberg International School, which is part of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I will also take Hebrew. Everyday, I will board a bus for half an hour to head across town to the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where I will be taking 2 dance classes of my choice. I speak basically no Hebrew (although I can ask for a beer, no, beer, not wine, please. Thank you very much), have very little idea what I'm getting myself into and have never been away from home this long. I am simultaneously ecstatic and vaguely  nauseous. Adventure, hi-ho!