J-19: Preparations

In 19 days, I will be flying to France where I will begin the greatest adventure of my life.
I have been awarded the Shawky Whitfield Research in Egyptian Art Scholarship, which will allow me to travel to seven countries where I will study (extensively) the ways in which European museums display, maintain, and promote their Egyptian collections.

Knowing that many of you are not at all interested in this field, I will not bore you with my findings (but you are welcome to read my final paper if you are so inclined). However, I will *try* to keep a blog so that you can follow me throughout Europe and hear all about what I see and do.
Note that I have tried keeping a blog many-a times before, and have never ever succeeded, so I'm not making any promises.

In preparation for my trip, I have had to outline an extremely detailed itinerary with exactly where I will be at what time in order to receive the grant. I cannot even begin to tell you how difficult that can be. Luckily, everyone has been super supportive (including my advisor, professors, and parents) and the preparations are almost complete (plane tickets, train tickets, and most hotels have been booked!).
If you ever decide to go to Europe, you can hire me as your itinerary developer, I have become a pro.

Am I nervous? Absolutely. Traveling ALONE to seven different countries is a bit scary, but I've traveled before, have bought my moneybelt (total nerd) and have begun trying to learn how to pronounce "where is the bathroom" in all of these languages. I'm sure I will be fine.

I am absolutely super duper excited about this and can't believe it is actually happening. I hope you will enjoy following me on this trip, and I promise I will try my hardest to keep up with this blog. (and if anything, I will at least upload plenty of pictures, because, for those of you who know me, you know that I don't go anywhere without my baby - aka Canon XTi).

That's all for now folks.