Correction

As an addendum to Sunday's post, the suitcase in which my clothing purportedly measured 80 lbs was a pack of lies. In fact, the suitcase itself was 19lbs, putting my clothing at a more reasonable 61 lbs, 11 lbs over the weight limit for bags.

So there.

"Do they have Marine Lands in Spain?"

Made it to New York, even though I had to sit next to this obnoxiously annoying newly-wed couple. More like an obnoxious woman. I really felt for the guy. But he did get himself into the whole eternity bit, so I can't help him there. Anyway, I hope I don't have to contend with an armrest hogger on the international flight. I doubt it, considering I probably will have seats with the other people from CC-CS. But on the JetBlue flight here, I couldn't even adjust the volume! All a result of obnoxious newly-wed married woman already nagging her husband, which pushed him over onto my armrest and as far as humanly possible (read three inches extra) away from his wife.

My interview went well today. I take it as a good sign that the HR lady hugged me afterward and seemed genuinely excited about my trip abroad.

Obviously, I'm on the verge of something exciting. But today, it started to sink into my synapses. It was like I got an invitation to start my life. "Come join, Meg. We're moving along. Are you in?"

The only thing that has not changed in my life in the last few days is the temperature in Sevilla. Holding steady at 66 degrees F.

"Yeah, Taking out the Shampoo Really Helped"

I really didn't want to get too heavy into pre-trip blogging because that defeats the purpose of the whole "Spain" part of this blog (even though being half-packed has still not made this a complete reality yet; when I think about this week and I look ahead, all I see is this blank space of the unknown). But this is too good to pass up.

First, let me preface this by hearkening back to those days in early August 2005 when I began to pack for Ithaca. Anyone who was there to witness this, including the amount of crap I managed to stow away in that cubicle of a room I had in the East Tower, knows that I brought a tremendous amount of crap to school. Fall semester this year, I did a lot better. "Considering you brought a duffel bag full of underwear alone to college I think you've cut back a lot," said Janelle.

So I had all of my stuff laid out for Spain, figured no biggie, just throw it into the bag. I packed the smaller bag first - even managed to fit my fleece sleeping bag in there - and it weighs in at a comfortable 30 pounds. No problem, I've been working out.

Mondo bag was next. I just kept piling and piling until I realized that crap, I wasn't going to be able to close it. So my mom came up, rearranged some things. Then my dad came to close it, in between gasps of laughter.

When he went to pick it up, I knew I was in trouble - he couldn't even lift it.

My mom and I unpacked it, I took out my shampoo (for all of you people who were deriding me for the toiletries, there you go). That cut out about 4 pounds, plus a couple of ounces for two shirts and some shower gel I removed.

We re-packed it. My mom dragged the scale over to the luggage. I manage to maneuver it onto the scale.

80 pounds.

This is a problem.

I've only got five minutes, that's all I'm allowed before we go back to unload HALF of what I've packed (which if that's any indication, that means I'll be at the weight of the other bag, and all I really have in there is some sweaters, pjs, underwear, socks, and shoes).

Are we there yet?

Spelling counts.

It has recently been brought to my attention by Greg that if you misspell blogspot in the web address, a page with some pretty shocking religious views shows up, doomsday predictions and all.

I hope that this is purely coincidental. Also, Greg brought up a salient point - what does megglesinspain have to do with the Apocalypse?

I'm going to leave that as a rhetorical question.

One week...

I never knew I could get so excited about buying cotton rounds. I've got a week left stateside - finally, all of those errands that I have been thinking about doing can be done. After all, it would have been premature to purchase a semester's worth of shampoo three weeks ago. So today, a final run to Wal Mart was in order. Got to love the goold old American value of mass consumption.

Last post I talked about the banking situation. And sorry, HSBC, but for the world's second largest bank, not having ATMs or branches in Spain is kind of pathetic. At least I think that is the case - I can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone there, and it's driving me crazy. In other news, I finally got around to getting my online passwords to my bank account (seriously, it's such a pain when you forget them, and you always do - there's like six layers of security required just to change my username) so that should make my life easier. Last night, I started to lay clothes out to pack. The first go-around is everything that I would want to take if I could teleport over there. Tonight, I'll add some more clothes (I gave up last night trying to decide how many gym shirts I'll need). Slowly, I will start to subtract clothing so that I won't have too much to carry. It will be a tough process, especially since most of the clothes I wear at home and at school are sweatpants, and that's not going to fly in Sevilla (when I told my sister this, she asked me how I was going to survive).

I received my family and my roommate information yesterday, that's exciting. In a strange twist, I think the father of my homestay family might be an academic in the chemistry field, which is ironic considering that my dad is a chemical engineer. My roommate is from New Jersey and she is a Spanish major so that will be helpful. I've been reviewing my Spanish (although I wish we had Telemundo, apparently Time Warner cannot appreciate that some in the suburbs wish to view Spanish language programming - ESPN Deportes is such a drag sometimes, especially when Beisbol Mexicana is on for five hours). Nightly chats with Janelle have been helping me get in the mindset. I miss English already. The other night when I was talking with Janlle I realized I didn't know the word for tape. As in Scotch tape. What if I need tape? Am I going to have to consult my Spanish-English dictionary to find a word that I take for granted in English? (Ironically, I do know the word for sweatpants, which, just for extra assurance to those critics who think that's all I own, I will not be bringing - sudaderas). I've been thinking a lot lately about what I've been saying, and if I could say it in Spanish. Needless to say, we're a far cry from that. But at least I won't have a repuation as a chatty cathy anymore.

Throughout all of this prep, I'm not really worried about the huge parts, like language, etc. Instead I've been devoting my energies to wondering what the deoderant situation is (I'm not kidding you here, one of my biggest fears is that there will be no deoderant). And I'll admit, it's still a little surreal, even with friends abroad and back at Ithaca. I keep thinking I'm going to be at home forever (it certainly has felt like that). But in a week, I'll be in Sevilla!

Two weeks and counting...

I finally caved and decided to create a blog because I think it will be a cool way to document my experiences in Sevilla. However, my feelings about blogs are mixed - how relevant can they be? Anyway, overcoming this fear, I've decided that I will keep a blog but also send occasional email updates (after all, I'm not going to be sitting at a computer wasting away in Europe).

I leave for New York on Monday, January 29th to spend a couple of days with extended family and possibly interview for a summer internship. I fly out of JFK on Wednesday, January 31 at 5:55pm, arriving in Madrid around 7am, and finally in Sevilla in late-morning, early afternoon. As of right now, I don't have much prepared for this trip. I realized today that HSBC, the world's local bank, apparently does not have personal financial services in Spain, so now I really do need to get to the bank and figure out the whole monetary situation. Today in church I got distracted thinking about all of the items I need to pack. Despite the mountain of preparation I have looming before me, I have elected to take the road less traveled - do nothing about it. Whenever something seems really overwhelming to me, my best solution is to not do anything. However, hopefully tomorrow I will get my act together, although I've been saying that for the last week.

For now, a big fear of the unknown. I've never been out of the country. But I've decided I'm going to "live in the moment" and take each piece at a time - traveling, orientation, meeting my host family (who I have yet to hear anything about, I'm starting to wonder if this is good or bad), starting classes. I'm only going to focus on one thing at a time, so for right now - getting there is my only concern.