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«Friday, June 16, 2000»
3:35 AM...
I got my student ID and Eurail pass yesterday, and my tickets came FedEx
today. Now that I have about 90 percent of my supplies, I decided to
pack most everything up, strap on my bags, and walk about three miles
around Lexington to get a feel for what I might be doing every day for the next five weeks. Two things are for sure: a. by the time i get back, I'm gonna be so buff; and b. my right foot is going to blister like hell. Five days...
«Tuesday, June 13, 2000»
3:20 PM...
Point of order: all posts on this weblog are recorded in central
European time (for authenicity). Also, the circle gets the square.
5:14 AM...
T-minus eight days. My flight out of Lousiville leaves next
Tuesday at 11:45 AM (with a six-hour layover in Charlotte, where I hope
to meet up with my old roomate Bryce for a few hours). So far I have
borrowed a backpack, bought a daypack, and started gathering supplies
(new shoes and sandals, a compass, bungee cords, a walkman, elements
for a first aid kit, etc). Last Friday I purchased my International
Student ID and Eurail Pass, which should be ready to pick up tomorrow.
All in all this is getting very exciting, but it doesn't seem real yet. En
route home today, I filled up the car at a Shell station on I-75. Amid
NPR reports about rising petro-prices in the midwest I thought, "In a
little over a week, I will spend over a month dependent on public
transportation and my limited knowlege of French to get around. Am I
ready for this?" The answer is yes and no. Still, I am terribly excited
to take my chances on these planes and trains. And Grégoire, with whom
I'll be staying for the first few days in Paris, tells me that after a
week in France those repressed seventh grade vocabulary words should
come rushing back to me. It
also struck me today that I'm going back to Florence... where, four
years ago, I tasted all 22 flavors of gelato on that little Via
Bernardo Rucellai corner shop. I plan to do it again. And the thoughts
of seeing my cousin in Madrid and swimming in the riviera and standing
in the camps at Dachau are beginning to overwhelm me. But it is all
still a few weeks away. Only a few weeks away
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