It Begins

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, I've been busy with school.  This blog post should be a pretty good update on my life.

Well, it's official.  I am officially an AFS Italy student.  A few days ago, I got an email saying that I was accepted to the Spring 2015 program.  YAY!  I started this crazy process in March of 2012, and have been looking forward to this day ever since.  This is a big deal to most people, but this is monumental for me.  With the amount of work and time I have put into this, it feels incredible to finally see it pay off.  As of right now, I am just about 4 months away from departure, but it feels like two weeks.  Everything became so real when I read that email.  I'm ready to just pack my suitcase and go!

So where do I go from here? Well, the only thing AFS Italy has left to do is find me a host family.  I hope that they find me one fast, but I know that this is probably the longest, most unpredictable, process.  I could have a host family next week, or I could have one 2 days before departure; no one knows for sure.  I am very excited to meet the family.  I want as much time as possible to learn about them before I go, it would make the adaption process that much easier.

That is the big next step for me.  There is a lot of small stuff that I have to organize, but I have been trying to get ahead on those for like a year, so I'm not worried about it.  I need to make sure I am up to date on all my vaccinations (done), start learning the language (done), start looking at flights to New York (done), and emotionally prepare myself for leaving, (not so done).

Now that I know that I am going for sure, I am trying to prepare myself to leave everything behind.  I am already trying to separate myself from social networks, and attempting to be as independent as I can.  I don't want to completely cut ties with everything quite yet though, because I know I will miss them when I'm gone.  It's rough.... haha

Well, that's about it.  I will try to update this more often as things happen.  It should start getting interesting now!