Visas and travel books

My visa arrived on Tuesday. I used to have a countdown until June 18th when I could apply for it and now it's August and it's here in my hands.* The reality of leaving is finally starting to sink in. In some ways, it's comforting. I'm no longer considering the possibilities of admitting defeat--of turning back up in Baton Rouge and saying, "oh yeah, didn't you hear? I'm staying in Louisiana until I die and even then, my decaying bones will never leave this humid, humid place." Now, my morbidity can only rely on the good ole, "my plane is going to crash and I'm going to die a sad, sad death all alone in the middle of the Atlantic."  Wasn't I supposed to be writing about how comforting reality setting in is? Because all of my worrying is slowly giving way to excitement. I'm going to England. Not only am I going to England, but I'm going to be living in England. I'll be actually, properly calling a tiny little dorm room home for nine months. I'll be traveling all over Europe, having all of the experiences I've been dreaming of for years. Now I get to dream about it without thinking, Yup, that's going to happen if I turn this application in by Tuesday... if I get accepted to the program... if my visa comes in the mail... if my parents agree to pay for it... if. If. IF. Finally, I'm looking out on an if-less horizon.

The reality of it, in other ways, isn't so comforting. For the past few days, I haven't been able to look my cat in the eyes. She went off to Baton Rouge with me and has been glued to my side for the past seven years. Now, I'm leaving her with a one-way ticket** and it feels dirty. Also, we go to school about six weeks earlier here in America, and my friends are all leaving without me. My cousin, we'll call her Josephine Pinkpants,*** is leaving in a week. My best friend from Baton Rouge is already up there getting ready for her RA job, my other best friend never left. I feel as though I'm watching my life go on without me as I'm waiting to begin a new one--like I'm in Summer purgatory.

Still, when all is said and done, reality setting in is a hundred times happier than it is sad. For one thing, it means trip planning. Last weekend my friend Cordelia Cadreshoes and I got together with a laptop and about a dozen (*cough* *cough* two) travel books**** to roughly plan out a couple of trips. There are three cities which we have to, and will, visit:

1) London. I'm not sure what sort of person goes to England without spending time in London or if ever a person existed. Frankly, I find it suspicious that neither of us are studying in London because it's not like our school didn't have any programs in London or anything. That said, we plan on spending more than a couple weekends in London. It's quite easy to get there and we have more than a few weekends worth of things we want to do there. We plan on seeing Wicked on the West End, taking a trip to Leavesden, going on a few self-guided tours, visiting the many museums, and just generally enjoying the city. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'm going to try to finagle an excused absence from class to head out to the U.S. Embassy and vote in my first ever presidential election. 

2) Edinburgh. Harry Potter history aside, this city ranks at the top of our to-do list. Both Cordelia and I had actually both wanted to study in Edinburgh. I've dreamed of this city. It looks old and spooky and spell-binding, and perfect. We plan on spending at least a weekend there going on Literary Pub tours, staring up at gorgeous old castles, and well squealing over being in the city where Harry was written.

3) Dublin. Though I've read Dubliners a few times, neither Cordelia nor I found ourselves knowing much of anything about what there actually was to do in the Republic of Ireland's capital city.**** We both want to go to Ireland, though, and Dublin seems like the best first stop. After doing a little research we found plenty of things we want to do. We can't wait to hit up the Dublin Writers Museum, the Guinness Storehouse, yet another castle, a few cathedrals, and, undoubtedly, we'll be visiting a pub or two.

So I should correct myself, we'll actually definitely visit a few more places, those we don't have as detailed plans for, however. (I didn't want to display them for the world to see until after we'd left them and stalking and/or ax-murdering was no longer possible, but we've even picked out a few hostels for each city and rough dates for the trips) Once we're settled in in our respective cities, I'll show Cordelia around Nottingham and she'll show me around Brighton, where she's studying. We also have loose plans to visit Stonehenge and various castles. We even have (very loose) plans for trips to France and the Netherlands. One trip, possibly the best one, will hopefully be confirmed next weekend.

Oh! And I have an EXTRA pre-England trip.

On September 2nd, I'm going to L.A. to visit Josephine Pinkpants and do ALL OF THE THINGS there. The trip should be a nice way to re-familiarizing myself with flying and touristing and time-zone changing, and travelling in general. I'll also use it as a test trip blog, to figure out how I want to format those, as the bulk of this blog will be entirely different from what I've been posting for the past few months.

Oh, and did I mention another factor in reality finally setting in was the fact that my mom and I have booked an apartment in Paris for my winter break? Our plans have been on/off since last January, but now, everything is booked and mostly paid for. It's most definitely on for good. Instead of flying home for the holidays, I'll be staying in the Latin Quarter for a month, practicing my French and pretending to be Parisian. I'll give you more on that later as I'll undoubtedly be blogging entire books about that particular trip.

Regards,
Julia


*Well, not at this very second, but I've spent too much time gazing at it lovingly.

**So technically I have a round trip ticket, because it was HALF OF THE PRICE of a one-way ticket, but as I have no plans as to when I'm going to return this summer, and I don't want to have to commit to a date a  year in advance, I booked my ticket for

*** Please don't kill me, Miss Pinkpants.

**** But I actually have about a dozen books about traveling to Europe, and I've looked through them all. I am QUEEN of the travel books. I've read them all--from everything to Frommers to Lonely Planet to MTV to vintage 1940s Literary Travel books. I am a hundred percent ready for backpacking... okay, maybe thirty percent ready. Which is fine. Thirty percent is much better than a hundred percent. A hundred percent leaves very little room for adventure, but zero percent leaves me crying at the train station. Thirty percent gives me just enough of a destination to get lost along the way. It gives me just enough confidence to be a little too confident. Thirty percent works perfectly.

***** Just making it blatantly clear that I am more than familiar with the political boundaries in Britain and Ireland. Cordelia and I actually took a 20th century British history class together last semester and are mostly almost kind of nearly familiar with the last hundred years of current events in the British Isles. And just there? I said British Isles and not just U.K. or Britain because I'm including England and Scotland and Wales and both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And The Isle of Man. And the Channel Islands. Blatantly Clear. Blatant. Clear. Together. (You know who has great information on the subject, plus a ton more about the geography and political history of the British Isles plus a ton of other things? C.G.P. Grey. His videos are the best. Watch them.)