Less Than a Month

Less than one month before I depart and my To-Do list is getting longer and longer.  I am feeling increasingly anxious.  I have only been studying French a few hours a week and feel that I will not be able to understand anyone when I arrive.  The anxiety is mounting.  I'm glad that I decided to start this trip in Paris so that I can slowly ease myself into full French immersion.  I feel like this is similar to preparing for your first year of college.  The same kinds of questions keep popping into my head:

Will I pack the right things?  

Will I wear the right things?

Will I get homesick? (Yes, dummy.)

Will they understand me?

Will I understand them?

Will I learn a lot?  Teach a little?

How can I figure out my career?

Do I have enough money?

Will I get drunk and make a fool out of myself? (Yes, dummy... only this time of a little Chateauneuf-du-Pape instead Cossack vodka.)

Will I make friends?

Will I grow into a more mature person?

Will I sleep okay?

And, many, many more.  The thing is, when I embarked on the journey that is college these fears almost instantly subsided and I came into my own.  Now, however, every few days will bring me to a new location with the same set of fears.  I presume this will be exhausting.  To assuage this fear and exhaustion, I will have to push myself to be consumed by the thrill of the hunt.  I am searching for extraordinary beauty within the realm of food and drink, emphasis on the latter.  I am examining how the production of food and drink shapes the culture of France as a whole as well as the individual cultures of villages and families.  How do people interact when discussing these things?  How do they interact when they are imbibing?  I am very interested to find the answers to these questions.  I hope that they belay a new set of questions and angles to approach this research.  

Alright, very little time to continue.  Have a lovely day.

CorkDork