One week to go...

It's just seven days now until I fly out to Russia. I've been spending the last few months thinking, oh, I could get excited about it and stop being nervous if I only I... had completed my health forms already, got my visa back already, had my new passport already, knew if the hotel really understood my email and booking, etc etc etc.

But the truth is, short of buying a suitably sized suitcase and actually putting everything in it, I think I am ready - and I'm still nervous.

It's not logical, really - I mean, I just took an even bigger leap of faith in going to university: getting up and going with all my possessions to live away from home for the first time for months at a time, without the option to come home because it's too far and uni education costs too much for me to ever be able to drop out without at least trying to get a degree, without knowing whether or not I'd like it. Going somewhere for three weeks should be a breeze after that.

Except, even though I technically go to university in another country to the one in which I have always lived, there is a teeny bit of a difference between going from England to Wales and going from England to Russia.

It doesn't help that I am terrified of flying and have never caught a plane by myself, either, or even at all since I was a young child, and that all my friends keep seeing Russia on the news and are now trying to convince me not to go because they're worried I might get bombed/blown up outside a powerstation/shot on the Trans-Siberian railway by angry border police who don't speak English (the latter of those three actually, worryingly, being the most plausible).

I know that once I'm there, everything will be fine.

I'm just not very good at waiting.