Merry Belated Christmas

With Christmas now over, all I can think about is my trip.  I no longer have to spend all my time hoping that I got someone the perfect gift, since they all have their stuff.  Now I get to start worrying about how I'm going to pack and how I'm going to be able to handle being away from all the people I love for four months without limited communication with everyone.  I'm starting to think about what's going to happen if I actually get culture shock, I've handled it before, so it's not gonna be too bad, right?  Or what if I can't pick up Czech as fast as I need to in order to talk to the local people?  It seems as I'm starting to get cold feet about the whole study abroad thing, but I know that I'm going to go through with the trip, I'm just having some second thought at the moment.  I already miss the people from Boone, how am I going to be able to go months without seeing them?  I'm used to going almost a semester without seeing my family for more than a few days, but it's going to be weird knowing that I'm not going to be able to see anyone I know for that long.  Luckily, the program I'm going through, AIFS, has us all meet up together in London before we go, so we'll all get to know each other there and hopefully make good friends.  If not, I'll just have to meet some awesome people early on in my classes at Charles University.

I'm also getting excited about playing around with my new camera.  I got a Cannon Digital Rebel for Christmas, which means that all of my dad's lenses fit on my camera and he can teach me all the little details of how to use it.  Last semester, I used a Nikon D40 for my photography class, so I haven't really played with the Cannon digital SLRs that much.  I'm hoping that I get to play around with it enough before I leave so that I'll be completely comfortable with it the whole time I'm abroad.  I'm also really excited that I now have a journal to keep a good record of my travels.  It's a beautiful journal and I can't wait to fill it's pages with the stories of my adventures while I'm over there.

Tomorrow I'm starting to work again for Turkshish Kebap House, which I'm really excited about.  Everyday working there is an adventure it seems.  I never went home over the summer without a funny story, which made life so much more interesting.  I'm going to be working five days a week, which will be good.  I'm trying to get some money saved up for Prague.  At the same time though, I kind of wanted to relax a little bit this break before the next semester and I really wanted to spend lots of time with all my friends from home.  I'm going to try to balance work, friends, and family so that I get to spend time with all the people I love while still being able to have some money saved up.  


Veselé Vánoce a šťastný nový rok!
Merry Christmas and a happy new year!