Pre-Departure

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"If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you."
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I am literally in love with this quote, and I suggest to all of you that you see Eat, Pray, Love and/or look-up quotes for it.  It's the final countdown, and in a short (errand-filled) 3 days I will be leaving for Seville, Spain.  I'm using the coming 5-6 months to take a break from my stressful work-and-school consumed life to enjoy my time with no work and only 12 credits of classes.  Hopefully, I'll have this extra time to relax, experience a new culture and even learn a little more about myself.

I've been looking forward to this trip for years, and I can't believe that in a short time I will be leaving for it.  I will not even attempt to describe the amount of emotions I am feeling at the moment. There are so many people that I will be leaving behind and I'm not prepared for those goodbyes yet.  Thankfully, I have equipped my loved ones with webcams and skype accounts so we will all remain in close contact!

These next few months I will be no doubt experiencing a number of "firsts," starting off with my first experience in Europe!  As I have not traveled extensively before I believe this trip will be a chance to test my true independence. 

I will be posting weekly (if not more) about these experiences because I know I will want to remember them and if you're reading this you're probably (hopefully) mildly interested as well :-)

So here are the details of my trip:  I will be living and studying in Seville, Spain for the Spring semester of 2011.  My program, Business and Society, starts on January 19th and ends on May 13th, with 2 week long breaks in between.  During those 2 week long breaks I plan to travel to England, Ireland, France, Italy, Portugal and Morocco.  I'm hoping to squeeze in some Germany as I've specifically heard Munich is a must-visit.  I will be taking one 2-week spanish intensive course right at the beginning, and then I will have 4 courses following that, hopefully including an internship with a local business.

Thankfully, I will be traveling with my roommate Britt, so I will have a shoulder to cry on at the airport and when I hit the portion of the trip most commonly known as "culture shock."  I hear it occurs after about 2 weeks of being there, so something to look forward to...not really...

Anyways, I hope my first post hasn't bored you to death and you actually want to come back and find out more! If nothing else, come back to see the pictures I'll attempt to post...although to be honest I've never done that before so we'll see if I can figure it out!

More to come soon :-)