The Final Countdown

Howdy! My flight is just 5 short days away. This time Sunday I will be saying my goodbyes to a few friends and family members as I head off to face my first adventure: Airport Security. But before then I have plenty of loose ends to tie up.

Today I went to the bank to take care of my financial situation. The easy part was getting my mom added to my account so she can add money, wire me stuff, etc. while I am gone or do anything else that needs done. Just in case. But then we encountered problems...I put in an order for $500 worth of Danish currency (DKK) and then was going to order foreign currency travelers checks. This branch has nearly 0 experience dealing with foreign currency conversions and transactions, and 20 minutes later I found out that the travelers checks were only available in Euro's. From my understanding a Euro is about as useful in Denmark as a dollar, so I scratched that idea and instead asked if I could get a few thousand dollars in US Dollar Traveler checks to take with me. None of the banks had enough and it was more expensive to do that than it was just to wire money over to myself after I get there, so i had to scratch that idea. So finally we decided to just increase my order of cash DKK and pay to have my rent and deposit wired over to that bank. This was a 2 hour ordeal, but tomorrow I will have pretty danish money waiting for me.

What else is on my "to-do" list before I leave?

• Applications (Freddy Court CA Application, SUV CA Application, Engineering Scholarship Application)
• Printing my Plane Tickets
• Making a V-Day gift for Miranda
• Packing and making sure I have everything I need
• Interview for Residence Hall CA Position on Thursday
• Some final Goodbyes (including a trip to Iowa City, I hope)
• Probably a dozen other things I am forgetting

I am still waiting on my phone in the mail. I accidentally had it shipped to Minneapolis to my old address and after a few days of badgering people on the phone I finally got it forwarded it. It should be here this week.

Lastly, I got in touch with my assigned "buddy" from Denmark. Her name is Malu Jamil and she seems very friendly. Her job is to meet me at the train station and show me my new apartment and help me get registered for everything the next day. She is also supposed to get me acquainted with the university and be my first friend there. A little bit of facebook stalking revealed some superficial details such as: she is an artist and appears to be Muslim (headwear, paintings with arabic script, etc.). Other than that, all I know is that she is friendly and is also the assigned buddy for a Spanish girl.

5 days away and it still doesn't feel real. I don't really now what to expect, and I would be hard pressed to describe myself as feeling "excited", but I can definitely feel the anxiety starting to build. But I know I am going to have a great trip and I can't wait to share pictures and stories with you all! I will leave you with a quote that feels fitting for this stage of my trip:

“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” -Susan Heller