There’s now officially twenty-one days until my departure for the Land of the Rising Sun.  I thought I would find out when I left a lot later, but somehow or other they told me early.  So here we are.

Twenty-one days to go.

And on hearing that, EVERYONE ups their compulsion to ask me the same questions:

‘Are you excited?’ (No.  And then they tell me they’re excited for me.  Why, thank you.  Please continue to be excited for me, because then I’ll start feeling somewhat excited too).

‘Have you packed yet?’ (No.  And I doubt I will be until right before I leave for the airport.  Three weeks is so far awayyyyyy.)

‘Are you ready?’ (Probably not.  But I’m not sure what I need to be ready for anyway, so I’m going to say yes.)

Although I have started moving things I want to bring into the lounge room so that I don’t forget to pack it later, because it’s okay for me to spread my belongings all around the house, since it’ll be gone in three weeks anyway.  And I have started making lists of what I want to bring.  People who just came back from the exchange all tell me, ‘Don’t bring too much!’ But what is too much? I’m packing for a year… where is the line between too little, and too much?

I suspect buying a $5 fleece blanket throw thing is probably considered ‘too much’.  But it’s comfortable.  And it’s red.  I can suffer how to bring it back once I get to it, this time next year.

Anyway, not much is still yet happening.  I feel like I’ve just been waiting it out, these last few weeks, because I don’t really know what to do to prepare except quietly catch up with friends and buy essential things like cameras and laptops (because tech is obviously the most essential thing to my life hahaha).  I’m not feeling any sort of excitement yet, because it still hasn’t really sunk in that I’m leaving in three weeks.  And I have no schedule to follow. There are no classes to fill up my days, work is sporadic, and there are no events to plan, no meetings to go to.

This freedom is what I imagine retirement to be like.  Nothing to do, just waiting my days out.  Except the journey at the end of the waiting is different.

The only things that I have been planning are the holidays and trips that I plan to go on, which shows exactly where my priorities are, when I don’t even know what the academic calendar looks like.

Ah well.  The pre-departure briefing is in a week, and I hope that gives me more of a framework to base my excitement on.  If not… I’ll just keep lazing around living the phetlyf until I realise there’s only ten hours till my flight and my suitcases are still empty.