arrival

"The plane swooped over jagged snow-covered mountains and landed without crashing in Zurich, Switzerland. A foreign country."

--Bloomability, Sharon Creech*

*this book is good. I recommend it.

in fact i recommend it so much that i named my blog after it.

you'll be seeing many quotes from it in the future, trust me. ;)

saying goodbye

i promised myself i wouldn't cry.

and i didn't. i didn't cry at the end of school. i didn't cry at my goodbye party. i didn't cry when all my bags were packed, or when we left the house, or during the car ride.

except then i said goodbye to my family, and that promise basically flew out the window.

it was hard to say goodbye to my grandparents and my aunt and my parents and my sisters and my little brother. still, they know that i will only be gone for a year.

but how do you explain exchange to a two-year-old?

my littlest sister doesn't know that i'm leaving for a year. she can't comprehend that i will be in another country. she doesn't understand that when i leave, i will be living on the other side of the world.

and so i look at her and tell her the things i know to be true.
"hannah is going
 far away,
and you will not see her
for a long, long time.
but you know what?
hannah loves you,
and she's coming back."

"i'm coming back."

days < 0 -- arriving

piece of advice for future exchange students #7:

you are going. you are going because this is an adventure and it is worth it.

stop panicking.

I'm here!
that's it. I'm too tired to write more. :)