I've never written a blog before; hell, I've never written anything on the Internet before. OK, that's a lie, but seriously the Internet scares me. It's vast and vague and I can't comprehend how it works, how it began, where it ends, and why the hell it sporadically disappears and forces me to have hour-long chats with a wholly disinterested Comcast veteran at least twice a month. But I digress...
I'm moving to England in September, and the thought of it produces tummy-flies of two sorts: those born of giddy excitement and those hampered by nauseous fear. Living in the UK has been a dream of mine since I was a "wee tot" (as they say). I developed a creepy interest in British history on my very first voyage across the pond when I was eight years old. I spent all my pence on dumbed-down guide books to Europe's churches, castles, death towers (Hello, Henry VIII!), and proceeded to be that pint-sized prodigy who corrected 25-year-old History major tour guides, mid-tour. Seriously, I acted like it was a personal game of Jeopardy and the other tourists were my audience, the guide my Alex Trebec. "What is, The Bubonic Plague?!"
As an undergraduate at a California university whose name shall not be revealed (but whose colors are blue and gold and mascot is the bear), I finagled my way into the British education system by studying abroad not in Spain or Chile or Zimbabwe like my peers, but at the University of Cambridge - that place of cobblestone streets and formal dinners and a stringent rule against walking on grass. It was the best three months of my life to date. And I have always wanted to return.
Now is my chance - a literal "once in a lifetime opportunity," if you will. I have been accepted to Cambridge's cousin - the slightly older but equally as wise University of Oxford. It's a chance to sell my "stuff," pack two suitcases of life, and buy a one-way ticket across the big ol' Atlantic, cat in arm and guitar in hand.
But first comes the planning - oh, the planning! When to move? When to quit my job? How to sell my stuff? What to give away? What to convince my parents to store for me so I don't get caught in a storage locker scheme ("$1 a month storage offer super exciting act now" my foot)?
There are lots of questions, and even more lists, and through this blog, I'll try to sort through them with your help, or maybe just your non-committal, silent, visual support. Either way, I hope it helps, because: Dude, I'm moving to England.
