Being a New Years Eve baby has always made birthdays interesting, but never so interesting as this year, when I will be boarding a plane to Ireland on my birthday, and touching down at what will only be a half hour past midnight in the time zone I am traveling from (East Coast). It will be a new year, both on the calendar, and for me. I will be starting a five-month adventure of living in Cork, Ireland, and studying at University College Cork, and this blog is where I will be sharing that adventure with friends, family, and anyone else who happens to find it.
A little background on me and study abroad: I’ve always been someone who likes to plan ahead, and so when my sister started looking at colleges when I was in 5th grade, I too started looking at colleges. And then I discovered what study abroad was, and I knew I wanted to do that. While my idea of where I wanted to go changed a bit over the years, I never hesitated about the idea of actually going abroad. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to travel a fair amount in my twenty years so far, but I’ve never stayed in any one place for longer than two weeks, so actually getting to live somewhere for a period of several months will be very different from what I have done before. Even when I got home from California to spend the holidays with my family, the reality of how soon I was leaving for Ireland had not hit me. I turned in final papers via email, and enjoyed the holidays, and suddenly the next thing I knew, I had only three days left at home (now two).
Because of a hip injury acquired in the last part of the fall semester, I’ve been going to physical therapy during my short time at home, and I spent a lot of time stressing about how my hip was going to affect my plans for classes (excuse me – modules) abroad. While I had been getting very excited to do dance while I was there, I hadn’t actually picked Ireland as my place to study abroad because of being able to do dance there – that had just been an additional perk. And by reminding myself of all of the other parts of going to Ireland that I was excited for – the history, the landscape, the culture (oh alright – and the accents and the good beer) – I was able to calm myself down.It turns out that I will be okay doing the dance modules, as long as I keep up my physical therapy exercises to prevent the injury from coming back (or so my physical therapist told me).
As I approach my actual departure date, I’ve pulled together almost everything I need to take with me – a new, waterproof, and hopefully very warm coat, my Ireland guide-book, and of course, my trusty traveling penguin Hoseki, who you will be seeing a fair amount of. But I’ll tell you more about Hoseki’s story another time – because about now, I should probably be packing. I leave you all with a picture of Hoseki from one of the last trips I took him on, where he is in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
Nerdy Wanderlust 