The Night Before

In exactly a day, I will be boarding my flight to Dublin! I want to thank everyone who's sent me emails over the past few days with suggestions for traveling alone and words of encouragement. I'm sorry I haven't emailed most of you back yet, but please know that it means a lot to me, and your advice has been very good. I'm now going off into the unknown armed with the advice of good people, and I feel significantly more prepared (though of course, my anxiety hasn't gone away entirely -- that would completely out of character).

Much of these next 20 hours will be spent packing, photocopying passports, getting new holes poked in sandal straps, negotiating with myself about the reasonable number of books to bring, trying to figure out what kind of adapters I need for each respective country, and to chose a traveling wardrobe that takes into consideration a more than 40 degree F temperature difference (the low in Belfast is 48, the high in Tel Aviv is 92).

I'm also trying, in these last countdown hours, to figure out what I, personally, want from this trip. Academics and conflict resolution aside, I've found summers especially (and these past four summers even more especially), to be times for personal reflection about what the hell I want from my life. The solitude of this trip will be particularly conducive to this, I'm sure. It was a somewhat conscious and happy decision to split my summer between two of my major interests -- domestic politics and foreign affairs -- and I'm hoping to see which one tickles my fancy more. But beyond that, I'm sure I'll learn plenty about myself when I have so much time to just listen to my inner monologue. The last time I really had time to do that was three summers ago right before college on my typical-college-age backpacking trip through Europe. I spent so many hours on trains with headphones on that it was hard not to concentrate on what was going on in my head. Hopefully, that same sort of feeling will be produced by walking around the streets of Belfast.

Speaking of headphones, though. I've gotten to the point where almost all the music on my ipod reminds me of some other place or time or person or situation. I'd like to have sort of clean slate music to listen to on this trip, if you get my drift. Music to attach new memories and thoughts to, music to be in the present with, instead of constantly letting my shuffled songs carry me to the past. So, once again, I ask for your advice! Any good music that has seen you through traveling? Anything especially evocative of a Northern Irish landscape?

And so, I leave you with that query. The next post will be from the Republic!

Keep those emails coming and be well,
Sarah