3 days and counting...

I really can't believe that I'm going to be in China in 3 days. It is utterly nerve wracking and overwhelming and, frankly, I don't like thinking about it. I'm not nervous about the normal aspects of traveling to another country, particularly one as foreign as the Middle Kingdom, like exchanging money or worrying about food and the possibility of contracting crazy diseases that could only originate in China. I'm very nervous about my placement test. I'm nervous about the Chinese people adjusting to me, rather than me adjusting to the Chinese people and their culture. I'm nervous about just being able to communicate in general when I get there (we can only speak in Chinese because of the language pledge we take a couple of days after arriving in Harbin). It's a little disheartening. I'm going to be there with 24 other CET Harbin students, 4 of which are Georgetown students, 2 of which I am good friends with, not to mention the 1.3 billion plus people that live in China. Yet I feel like being there, surrounded by all of these people, could still be very lonely. But regardless of my trepidations, unfounded or not, I will still be taking off from Newark at about 8:40 on Tuesday morning, heading for what will be one of the most momentous experiences of my life.