Nine Days To Go!

As the countdown of days until departure rolls into single digits, I am getting to be more nervous than I anticipated.

Things I am Nervous About:

• Being away from the people I care about for an extensive period of time. Not seeing my best friend for a year (she's doing Spring and Summer abroad in China). Not talking to my family regularly.
• Living with a new family, adjusting to their rules and the mores of Chilean life.
• The Spanish. I'm not nearly fluent enough--communicating is going to be difficult for at least a few weeks.
• Still nervous about accidentally breaking some cultural taboo unintentionally and winding up offending someone...
• Post-program travel. Do I really want to spend two months traveling around after three months away?
• The required readings are difficult--which means that classes are going to be difficult. Which is fine; I enjoy an academic challenge. But the fact that everything's in Spanish complicates things a great deal.
• Grades, tests, and the possibility of lecture classes. I've been away from those things for a long time now, and I'm not looking forward to getting back to them. I don't want to become ridiculously competitive over grades, but I want to do well. I feel a lot of pressure to get all As, because these grades will be some of few that will show up on my Hampshire transcript--and I want grad schools to be interested enough in me to read my evaluations. As for tests--I get quite anxious about them, and am very unpracticed in both the actual test-taking and the studying beforehand. I'd rather write a paper.

Things I am Excited For:

• Travel. To see five new countries, and return to one that is home away from home.Meeting new people. The people I've spoken to from the program seem really nice so far, and I can't wait to meet them face to face. Meeting my family in Uruguay and Brazil.
• To finally be fluent in another language.
• My independent study project--I'll write more about this after meeting with the Academic Director in Chile and getting everything approved.
• Classes. To learn new things that I wouldn't have the opportunity to study in depth in the US.

This should really be a Venn Diagram--there are so many overlaps.