Christmas and New Year were rather non-eventful this year. I feel that M&S is largely to blame; one of the most exciting things about Christmas was that it was a day off. And there were no surprises because I’d chosen all of my presents myself, needing a lot of stuff for going traveling. Despite this I still have a huge list of things left to get, and no idea how it’s all going to fit in my backpack. Hmm. For New Year Sam came over and we watched Jools Holland and went ‘yay’ at midnight, which admittedly was not the most exciting thing we could have done, but at least it was better than the New Year my parents dragged me off to the community centre. My not-exactly-resolutions but things that I’m going to aim for this year are:

1) To go out to the Andes and ENJOY MYSELF.
2) To get funding for a masters.
3) To make the most of being back at RHUL in September.
4) To have a sudden epiphany while lying on a beach in Ecuador about what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life.

What is very exciting though is that I finished working at M&S on Saturday. Hurrah! I am very happy. No more screaming children, no more old ladies dropping their walking sticks in the middle of the express-tills queue, no more customers asking me where the bloody meringue nests are, no more eternal stacking of fish pies and teacakes, no more Big Issue sellers counting out 28 pounds worth of food in pound coins, no more sitting on a till mindlessly repeating the same phrases over and over again in manner of a parrot, no more huge unshapely M&S jumpers which make me look and feel about 17, no more retail Christmasses (I swear never again), no more customers rudely ignoring me when I say hello to them, no more customers in general. No more being a checkout girl. Now I can just be me, which is much more preferable.

In under two weeks time I’m going to be the Andes. I’m actually going to be in the Andes. It’s not something that I can really get my head around. I don’t think things will start to seem real until after I’ve got out there, and even then it might take a while. Possibly similar to the time I went to New York for a weekend with my family, and couldn’t quite believe for the whole three days we were there that I was actually in somewhere so unbelievable as New York. And on top of the fact that the Andes are simply so far away, it’s also a place that has such significance and meaning already attached to it in my head, and has had for over a year now, because of all the Andean music that happened at RHUL. I’ve already got such expectations.

Half of me is wishing at the moment that I wasn’t going at all. That I could just stay at home instead, where everything is safe, and easy, and predictable. The other half is wildly excited, although still rather apprehensive about being stuck with a random group of people for four months. Half of me is wondering what on Earth possessed me to pick almost the hardest option available, when it would have been so much easier to travel with Rachel and Tessa, through white and English-speaking countries, or to go and work in New Zealand in a bar for a year. I must have chosen potentially the only place in the world where malaria and altitude sickness exist in such close proximity to each other. But then the other half is hugely looking forward to going somewhere so challenging and adventurous and exciting and colourful and different, with mountains and rainforests and deserts and simply so much scenery and culture.

It’s very much like going off to University for the first time. The good things, though, are that I’ve already been to University for the first time and survived, and also that when I left school for RHUL I wasn’t at all excited, only scared. Which is making me feel considerably more confident.

There is far too much to do before I leave. I’ve now had my 8th and final injection, and brought half of my kit, and got a place from RHUL for a masters (hurrah!), but still need to sort out money and a phone and any number of other little things, and to say goodbye to many less people than I wish I could, and to send off a funding application (rather worryingly I worked out the other day that each word of my proposal is worth 20 pounds. Hmm.) I thought I might have learnt from the sheer dissertation-in-two-weeks insanity of my Easter holidays, but obviously I am doomed to be a last-minute person. I suppose, on the plus side though, this means that I’m not going to have so much time to sit around and think and panic.

I’m sure that I’ll update again before I go, probably with nervous ramblings and swearing the night before, but I do hope to keep this going anyway once I’m out there.

Argh!