9 Days Till Departure!

So..... I come back from Albany yesterday and it hits me that I only have about a week until I leave for Ireland, which is just insane. Studying abroad is always something that I had pictured myself doing in college, though when my spring semester started last year I finally decided to take action into this. Originally the place that I wanted to go to was London England, though over the summer I took an amazing trip to London and realized that all though I loved it and would like to visit there many times I really wanted to go somewhere a little bit different than what I'm used to. Since I'm a native New Yorker I wanted to see something outside of a big cosmo city. So Ireland began to attract me, especially because I have became a lot more interested in my strong Irish heritage recently. So after a long summer of mulling over whether or not I'm going to study abroad and a stressful semester of paperwork both with Lesley and API (the study abroad organization that I am going with) It has finally came to be only a little over a week till I leave the United States for four months and four days.

Leaving the United States for so long is absolutely mind boggling to me, up until May of last year I had never been outside of the United States, now I will be out for such a long time and hopefully go to many other different countries because when I'm there I want to be able to go all over Europe. There are so many things that I hope to gain from this experience, overall I hope that it will make me a better person, I want to get a perspective of the world outside of the United States, especially on issues such as the Middle East and many different social issues.

Though leaving for this long is extremely scary for me. I know that all this fear is worth the amazing experience that I'm going to have. Though one as silly as this sounds is one of my fears is that I make no friends during the trip and I just sit around waiting to come home, though I have a feeling that won't happen and I can control whether or not it does happen. Also I am so sad about not being at Lesley next semester, it seems like every semester that I'm there I love it more and I feel even closer with my friends. I feel so much at home in Cambridge and that means so much to me because I went through high school not exactly enjoying living in Lynbrook NY so I love being able to love where I live. Leaving everything I know for four months makes me realize how blessed I am in so many ways, I just hope that I won't be forgotten about while I'm across the pond.

So I will probably update this a few more times before I go, and while I'm there I can promise that I will be taking lots of pictures since I'm well, me. So please be in touch. I attached some photo's of my time with my cousins John. A and Julia for new years, too people who I'm going to miss so much while I'm in Ireland.