4 Days and Counting

It's really rather incredible to be honest...I'm not sure how time has gone by so fast. I have today, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday left. I leave so early on Sunday morning that it hardly counts as being a day. So here I am...four days left at home in the US. Yikes! It's crazy to think that next week I'll be in Mexico taking classes and living with my "new" family.

The last few days have been a blur of getting ready. I was really rather unprepared, but things are starting to get more under control. I spent most of Monday dealing with Michigan State University's Office of Financial Aid. In general, summer financial aid refunds aren't processed until 10 days before classes start. Well, Friday was the 10 day mark and I still had heard nothing about when I would be receiving my refund. Talk about having me sweating with worry! I had already had to defer paying for the program and I still had no idea when I would be getting the money!! Monday came around and I was finally tired of waiting to get an e-mail back, I called the office and talked directly to someone there. Of course there had to be a hitch though...one of my loans hadn't been released yet. So I had to call someone else, who of course wasn't there, and leave a message. By the time that 3 pm came around I was sick of waiting for them to call me back and ended up just driving over to campus to see if I could get it to work out in person. Lo and behold by the time I got there everything was already worked out and I just had to pick up the check and race to the bank to get it deposited, get a cashiers check to pay my bill, and get it in the mail. Whew! At least that major hurdle got tackled. It's pretty hard to go on a trip without the money that you were expecting.

Tuesday started off with a Dr's appointment. I needed to make sure that I had enough of my prescriptions on hand to last the 2 months plus extra written prescriptions to prove that they were mine. She also suggested that I get a Hepatitis A shot just to be safe since Mexico and Central America are known to have produce infected with the disease (just what I wanted to hear...). Then I went home and worked on figuring out what I still needed to get for the trip....and oh boy was it quite a list!! I was looking through all of the suggested items to take and I was really surprised by how much I still needed to get. After Nathan got out of work at 5 we started tackling my ridiculously long (and expensive) list. We managed to pause long enough to eat dinner at Outback and managed to make it home by 11. Haha...yep, we were shopping for at least 5 hours and we hadn't found everything that we needed!!

This morning we went to the bank again and tackled the rest of the shopping list before Nathan went into work for an evening shift. There are only 2 or 3 things left that I need to pick up so I'm feeling pretty good about that at least. I have no idea how I'm going to pack for 2 months with just 1 checked bag, 1 carry on, and my personal item. It's a mystery that I'll fill you all in on once I figure it out myself! The next four days are guaranteed going to be crazy busy and a little bittersweet. Even though I'm setting off on an adventure that I'm sure I'll enjoy, I'm sad to be leaving my home and fiancé.