Getting down to the wire. Seven days until I leave!
I haven’t actually started packing yet (pause for judgmental stares). In fairness, I’m known to do most of my packing to move in and out of school the night before, and that endeavor involves getting a lot more stuff from Point A to Point B. I inevitably forget something every time I pack for a trip or a move, and I will certainly forget something for this trip. The fun part is figuring out what is was once I’m finally settled. It’s like a little move-in mystery! Last semester it was all my towels. C’est la vie.
Procrastination aside, there’s other prep work that I’ve been taking care of in the last week or so. Most of it is dull but necessary stuff, like giving a travel notice to the bank and buying plug adaptors and photocopying my passport in case I lose it. Along with that, yesterday I got around to changing some of my American dollars into pounds.
I really did not expect to get as heated about English pounds as I did, but let me tell you, I do not like this money. To start with, the ten pound notes aren’t even paper, they’re some kind of weird vinyl-like plastic. The other ones are paper, thank goodness, but the colors. It’s like walking around with a wallet full of monopoly money. Not to mention, none of the bills are the same size! I can get behind that from a standpoint of helping the blind, but the fact that I can’t have a nice tidy stack irks me to the core. Even better, I was surprised at the exchange booth when I counted out the bills to see that I hadn’t been given any one pound notes. Why would this be? I asked myself, and then I remembered that there are no one pound notes, only coins. In the immortal words of Julie Andrews’ Queen Clarisse of Genovia, “It isn’t appropriate for royalty to jingle.” I think I might be more annoyed about the design of English money than I am about the exchange rate meaning my dollar won’t go as far. I hope I’ll get used to the difference at some point, otherwise I’m going to end up being mildly infuriated every time I have to pay for something in cash.
This weekend I’m spending a bit of time at good old FDU to see some friends and maybe laugh at them a little bit for starting classes before I do. If you’re in the vicinity and want to see me before I’m gone for four months, hit me up! I’m going to miss everyone like crazy and want to get in as much visiting as I can before I go.
That’s all for now! Stay tuned to find out what I forgot to pack.
Meghan McGowan 