ten days.

TEN DAYS

Yeah. Oh man. I leave for Lux in ten days. I haven't even started packing yet. Typical. :]

I spent the rest of my summer after Rome in Oxford taking an incredibly boring Shakespeare class and working in sub-zero temperatures in the library. The combination of those two things led to a LOT of stalking the Ryanair (budget airlines) website for cheap tickets to exciting places. Obviously this made me really excited to go to Lux. I also figured out that it would be very hard to get to Rome on a weekend trip because of flight times our of our closest airport (you know, because I want to go back and visit my friends and all), so I'm aiming to get over there during one of our longer trips. Ideally my music class will take our field trip to Venice like last fall and then Rome is only a hop, skip, and a jump away by cheap Italian train. And I am PUMPED to see my friends in Rome.

I got to see my friend Andrea in New York City with Melanie this week. He and his sister Francesca are studying English there for about a month, and so we planned a trip to go up to see them. It got a little complicated with plane tickets and bus tickets and driving my car, but ultimately I got to spend three days there with them and some friends from Miami. We got some cheesecake in Times Square one night and then introduced them to Chipotle and hung out at their apartment the next. I don't know how watching youtube always seems to happen when people are sitting around a computer, but in case anyone was wondering, the double rainbow video is cross culturally funny. Boys will be girls is not. Since Andrea and his sister had classes in the morning, so we explored Manhattan a little while they were gone. Overall though, I was just so happy we got to see Andrea again! He was a part of the group of friends in Rome that we saw a lot, and it just kind of sucks having friends who live in another country. Praise God this worked out! We also got to talk to Andrea a little bit about what he believed which I never got the chance to do in Rome. I like friendships when people know me as someone who they can talk about spiritual things with, so praise God for that too. That's something I want to have more often.

It was a great last hurrah in America. Now I'm just gearing up for leaving again. I seriously need to start packing. And I want to plan our first weekend trip before we leave the States so we can get a good deal. And I'm going to go down to Oxford for move-in weekend to see the freshmen freaking out... oh and seeing all my friends. I'm excited. Can't wait to write all about it.