Le Début - Countdown, 9 days

Greetings. If you don't already know, my name is Liz. I am a 21-year-old Junior at Boston University, I hail from Dighton, MA (though Boston is slowly becoming more "home" than Dighton is) and I will soon be able to say that I live in Paris, France. Well, at least for this next semester.

I am starting this blog to record my journey, to share it with others, to sort out my thoughts, and to otherwise continue a self-exploitive tradition that I have valued for many years, as can be witnessed most explicitly in my retired Livejournal. I love writing, I love traveling, and I love preserving memories. Thus, a blog seemed appropriate. I've missed blogging. I'm not sure what that says about my attachment to technology, the fact that I can actually miss blogging (see: Donna Haraway's The Cyborg Manifesto), but here we are.

My life tends to move in cycles, cycles that appear in sequences of four. My freshman year of college echoed my freshman year of high school - forgettable, detached, poignant only in specific moments. Similarly, my sophomore years of college and high school were mirrors - both developmental, transitional, the pupae of my previous caterpillar stages. And as in high school, I have blossomed now in my Junior year of college. I'm finally getting good grades, feeling stimulated and inspired by academia, developing friendships that are better than just superficial, and accepting change into my life. I hate change. HATE it. Which is precisely why my life moves in cycles. Change ruptures the cycles, and I have to start over.

But what now? This is perhaps a more monumental change than the start of college itself. But I can feel myself changing, and I'm not resisting it. My mind is stirring with renewal and questioning, searching to find itself. I feel uncomfortable inside myself, not hateful, but squirmy. This is the time. This is the perfect time to go to Paris and set myself free.

Four years ago, I went to Europe for the first time. It was for ten days on a stupid school trip, but I will swear, even to this day, going to Europe changed my life. I am hardly sure how. But I know that the swirling questions and self-consciousness inside my head that pestered me throughout high school - well, they finally settled. I found something more solid and certain. My restless sense of self found a sort of definition, a new "ness" that gave me direction, inspiration, and above all, passion.

I don't expect this trip to Europe to be quite the same, because whenever I think life has decided to keep to its patterns, it swerves in an unpredictable direction. But that's why I want to document my journey - to watch myself change, as I undoubtedly will, and to remember what I learn, who I meet, what I do...and to share it with whomever cares to read.

I promise most entries won't be quite so dry as this one. I hope to include daily pictures and longer weekly entries, hopefully ones that are somewhat interesting. So that's the plan, I suppose.

I leave for Paris in 9 days. I am...more emotions than I could ever find the time and vocabulary to describe.