Off

In roughly 2 hours, I'm catching a train to London, and setting off on my Euro-Christmasy trek across the Alps (if anyone is curious, I'm in Geneva for Christmas and London for New Year's). After an extremely late night attempting to pack, rushing together final travel plans, consulting train schedules, and trying to remember how to speak French, I think I can say that I am about as planned as I'm ever going to be. All that's left to do is walk out the door. I'm armed with a Eurail pass, approximately 2.5 GB of camera memory, and quite a few New England-ish articles of clothing from Eddie Bauer. But I'm definitely quite nervous. As I've stated earlier, I have quite a few visions of myself sleeping in some random train station in the middle of Austria, or not being able to escape the Czech Republic or something. But I think the excitement now outweighs the nervousness. I'm just ready to go now. I think the highlights of the trip are going to be skiing or whatever alpine activity in Chamonix, my solo trip to Austria, Prague, seeing family and friends, and the London Symphony concert I'm going to at the very end. It will be interesting as well to see how I manage literally living out of a suitcase for 3 weeks. I'm pretty proud of my packing job, I went really light. I definitely won't be very stylish, but at least I'll be functional. So, right. I just wanted to share the above pictures. First is my Eurail pass, which is basically the most valuable thing I own for the next month or so. You'd think $400 would look a little more impressive... Second is British Pizza Hut delivery, which I must say, takes American Pizza Hut to school. It was amazing. So anyways, t-minus one hour till I ship out for the station. As you may suspect, blog posts will become less frequent for the next 3 weeks. I will try to provide quick updates via the use of internet cafes and such. Although I'll miss playing in the Christmas band back home at church, along with all the other Christmasy traditions, this will be a good thing for me to do. Every once in a while, we must do things that are uncomfortable or difficult, in order to grow as people. I would characterize this journey as one of those things. Everyone stay well, wish me luck, and have a very merry Christmas!

P.S.- If anyone is interested in calling me while on break, I actually have my correct cell phone number here for an international caller. Keep in mind that when in Europe, I am 7 hours ahead instead of the 6 on the British Isles. On my phone at least, the "+" is formed by holding down the zero. Or double tapping it.

+44 79 6003 9380