Gate 101 blog sesh

I'm sitting in the terminal at the Orlando airport with 3 hours to kill before I officially leave American soil for the next four months of my life. It's crazy. If not for the palm trees out the window and boarding pass with my name on it reading 1:30 pm flight to Nassau bahamas, I probably wouldn't believe this is really happening. But I'm here, done with the first leg of the trip, a 2 hour flight out of Dulles. My flight took off at 6:50am, which means I am running on about three and a half hours of sleep tops right now. I didn't get to bed until around 12:30 last night due to all of the anticipation and nerves and then had to wake up at 4am. I'm exhausted! Probably should have slept on the flight but JetBlue's free television was too enticing. Plus I had to be awake in order to get my mini bottle of water and bag of popcorn from the stewardess. No way was I missing that. Big fan of anything free, especially food. Saying goodbye to my mom, who was crazy enough to wake up at that early hour, almost killed me. I couldn't stop the tears from spilling. Proof that maybe the magnitude of everything is finally sinking in, at least subconsciously. I'm going to miss everyone so much! Oh gosh, just thinking about is bringing tears to my eyes. This is definitely going to be one of the biggest adventures of my life. It's scary. I have no idea who I am going to meet, what I will see, do, experience. Everything is completely unknown. I can't even fathom it. The hardest part will be the limited communication I will have with friends and family back home. My phone is out of commission as soon as I land in Nassau. My only means are the email account Semester at Sea will provide at check-in. Just words on paper, no familiar voice at the other end of the phone line. It will be tough in the beginning but I have no doubt that in time it will grow easier. This limited contact with home and all that I am familiar with will force me to step up, step out and gain my own footing in this world and discover who I am, independent of the support network that has carried me through life so far. I'm excited to see how I grow from this experience. I have one rule so far for this journey: No regrets. This is my chance to experience some pretty extraordinary things and there is no way I am going to let any inhibitions or fears prevent me from seizing every opportunity that presents itself. As the blog title states, I'm keeping my eyes wide open, soaking up every moment and acting on intuition. That's my plan, anyways. Let's see how it goes.