I’m freaking out because I don’t feel at all prepared for this exchange. But the point is that I can never be prepared for something like this. I don’t know what it’s going to be like in Norway, or anywhere else I might find myself. I can’t plan out every detail to the T – all I can do is prepare for the worst. But I still feel like I don’t know anything – like a small child being thrust into the deep end of the pool when she doesn’t know how to float yet. When I went shopping today with my mom, I felt even smaller when she would mention important things that I had gone over but had forgotten, or even things that I didn’t even think about. In her spare time, she had read travel blogs and located places where I could cash in traveller’s cheques, etc. and here I was, still unable to quite remember what classes I had listed to take. When I told her how I would pack something, she would point out something I didn’t consider and give a better alternative and all I could do was sheepishly pout. I’m such a child around my mother.

But that’s the whole point of this trip, isn’t it? To leave my comfort zone. To stop being coddled and take care of myself. To take the leap into the deep end of the pool willingly and not drown. That means not knowing what I’m really getting myself into. That means being brave even though I’m exci-terrified. I’m finally taking flight with my own two wings.

I am sitting alone in the first car of a roller-coaster, the heavy clinking of the track chain pulling me up towards the top of the hill. I’m nearly at the top now, and every day that passes is another clink uphill. In four days, I will be at the top of the tracks, about to take the first plunge.

What will await me?

I hold my breath. I don’t know. The truth is, I won’t until gravity pulls me downward. I won’t know until I finish the roller-coaster ride and get off. What I am confident in is the fact that I chose to ride this particular ride and that with every roller-coaster I’ve ridden in my life, I’ve always said at the end:

“Let’s do that again!”