Tuesday 1st June - minus 19 days!!

So its June 1st!! And that means 3 things; its 10 days until the World Cup starts, 11 days till I take one more step closer to 30, and 19 until I officially start my travels by getting on a train at Preston. 3 weeks today I will be in Long Lake, NY at the camp I will call home for 10 weeks, and Ive gotta say Im pretty damn excited! Although as it would turn out theres a fairly thin line between excited and terrified and I cross it on an alarmingly regular basis! I cant believe I get to get paid to teach the flute to people, it sounds so perfect its insane, and to get the chance to do it in America just makes it all the better. I have occasional wobbles where I wonder if Ill actually be able to manage it, but Im assured I will so Im just going to act confident and hope everything else falls into place!

Im mostly ready to go I think, Ive got a few things left to get, and those of you who know me well can congratulate me on waiting until now to pack!! My visa was sorted back in April during a short but terrifying trip to the Embassy in London, my travel insurance was eventually sorted out shortly after and last week I finally won my fight with my doctor to get enough medication to last all summer so hooray for not having to spend $500 of my savings/wages on that!! Ive also got most of my travelling sorted for afterwards, and although some details may change depending on camp, they should mostly stay the same. I wont go into it all now, but have done a handy Google map, so those of you who are interested and I havent already told in great detail (although there cant be many of you who exist!), feel free to look here........
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=109629027493582904002.000487588e1fda26f9ebd&ll=38.959409,-98.261719&spn=32.907523,78.662109&z=4

Its weird planning to be away for the whole summer, I wont be back in England till October so that part of my diary is going to be fairly empty!! Theres a lot of people Im going to miss loads when I have the time, and I suspect having Helen (a friend of my course who got me the job for those of you who dont know her) there will be an absolute godsend! Seeing the babies at the weekend was hard, I wont see them till Christmas now, Im missing both their birthdays and just generally 6 months is a long time in little kids lives!! Ive had to promise to send postcards, although not one for all of them, obviously Sam gets his own :P I also wont feel like Ive had much of a break from uni, I leave the last week of term, and miss the Extravs (end of term parties) although maybe spending close to 12 hours covered in Strongbow and blackcurrant wont be such a bad thing to miss! I am feeling left out of the planning though, and have to constantly remind myself that Ill be here for it next year, and at the end of the day Im doing something much better!! (Im not always convinced!!)

Its also been a surprise that I really feel that Im going to miss Stafford House this year. For all that was awful last summer there were a lot of good times and Ive got some lovely memories and its weird to think I wont be going back. I always make good friends there too, and usually in some excellent holiday places (I had a lovely week in Barcelona last year courtesy of Julia!), although I can see this year being the same in that respect! I will miss learning more of a language though, camp was always an excellent place to practice Italian, and this year I picked up Spanish as well, so being able to speak English all summer could make it a very different experience of working with kids.

I have several things left to do in England before I leave though, turn 23, watch England beat the USA (one can only hope), do my end of year recital, which officially finishes my year, and then lug all my possessions down 4 flights of stairs and argue with Mum about where in the car they go! Who cant look forward to all of that?! Probably not much more to say until after that, so Ill let you know when Im on my way :)