Aight folks, here it is. After a full day and a half of relentless packing, and then weighing, and then reconfiguring, and then re-packing, it's finally here. Tomorrow (as in like 4 hours) I'm waking up and starting a 24 hour journey to a far off land called The Netherlands. Yup. I am sad to leave my family and friends here, but I have to say that after a lot of thinking and panicking about everything that could possibly go wrong, I think I'm ready for it. Dad says that I've packed far more than I need to, but I think that it's better to be safe than sorry. So there, dad. I can't express how much I appreciate how supportive and helpful my parents have been this last week. I would be walking up the stairs and one of them would say hello in the wrong tone and I would just burst out crying. And what would they do, they sat me down and made me feel better about everything. They have set up all the insurance stuff and ticket stuff that I don't understand and when they are being this wonderful (which is all the time of course), it makes it all the more difficult to think of how I won't see them for at least 2 months before they come visit. That being said, I really need to get to sleep since I leave in about 5 hours and I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep now. More updates about the trip over to Leiden will probably come after we get settled in, but for now just send some good thoughts in our direction as we head off into the unknown!

Cat