T-One Month

By this time next month, I'll be in Shenzhen. It's kind of an intimidating thought, and yet I feel stuck in a weird state of limbo. My visa paperwork hasn't arrived yet, the tickets are bought, a subletter has been found for my apartment, so all I have left to do now is pack. It feels a little premature though, to pack when I'm not leaving for a month yet. I know that's just a mental fiction- between visiting family and friends one last time and general procrastination and laziness, that month will evaporate like so much fog off of a Southern Chinese harbor.

Even so, these past few months since I decided to leave have been great for getting things checked off of my personal "to do" list. I've tried more restaurants and seen more friends in the last month than I had in the three months before I announced my move. Everything is suffused with a pre-nostalgic aura of "I better do this before I leave and can never do it again", even if that's a complete lie. A year isn't that long, after all. And yet, it feels like it's forever.

This is not what I'm going to return home to.

I've bought everything I need to spend a year in one of the world's biggest economies, in one of their most industrialized cities. I've bought shoes to fit my huge American feet, I've bought clothes to fit my huge American body (and oh boy, expect posts about that once I get there!). I've been told to bring deodorant more times than I can count (though I don't think it's a poke at any personal hygiene habits). I've eaten the foods I think I'll miss from the States, though of course, I won't know if there's anything else I'll miss until I get there. Now, it's just the waiting. Well, waiting and packing.