The Last 24

My flight to Germany leaves in 24 hours and 56 minutes, but who’s counting? To say I’m excited would be an enormous understatement. 

This will be my first trip as an adult and travelling by myself. I have been to Europe before on a high school trip to Italy that was completely planned out and supervised by teachers and parents. I also travelled back home to Hawaii with my sister to spend a few months there during the summers while I was growing up but I was never truly alone. When I get on the plane tomorrow I will be travelling completely by myself for the first time and while I thought this might terrify me, its actually exhilarating! I think this will be a great learning experience about being on my own and doing things independently. After having read the blog posts from previous years I have no doubt that I will be learning so much about not only medicine but other cultures. I’m so excited about learning about everyday life through my host family and hope to have an unforgettable experience.

I can’t wait for this incredible learning experience but at the same time I’m pretty nervous. My plane tickets, Eurorail pass and German to English translation book are ready to go but I can’t help the nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something. Perhaps it’s my sense of adventure and trust that everything will work itself out but I haven’t been terribly worried about it until a few nights ago when I had a nightmare that I showed up to the airport without a suitcase or tickets. Being unprepared is probably my biggest concern even though I have probably read every travel blog written and checked my packing list more than Mr. Claus. Being a close second would be the language barrier, hence the German to English translation book. I took Spanish in high school and know “nein” German so you can imagine my alarm when my host family emailed me in complete German! I’m hoping to make this into another part of the learning experience and pick up a little bit of German from my host.