Two Weeks Till Takeoff

So here's where we stand. It is sixteen days until I leave. Little more than two weeks. This is my first time traveling abroad anywhere, much less alone. It's going to be such an exciting trip. I leave Las Vegas tomorrow morning to return to Albuquerque. An eight hour drive and I'll be back in my apartment with the grumpy old man who lives downstairs. And then I get on a plane!

My list of essentials include:

• Connection to Netflix.
• Tea (I have lots of new Teavana stuff that I plan on taking with me and using up while buying new brands of Earl Grey and Lady Londonderry)
• Notebooks for drawings, musings, and plottings
• Pens for the aforementioned nonsense
• Map of England so people can tell me where they're from and mark it on the map for me
• Textbooks

I'm looking forward to some of the textbooks, too. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language for one. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who sits and compares Welsh accents to Minnesota ones, and watch British television until I'm even thinking in Received Pronunciation. 

When I found out they have a creative writing supervisory Cambridge's Pembroke-King's College Programme, I was sold. It meant making some serious sacrifices, but it is absolutely worth it. It means I don't get to go to World Choirs Games with my barbershopping girls, but I know they will do an amazing job without me. 

I have a list of things I want to do in the first two days I get to spend in London, and they include:

• Buckingham Palace
• Tower of London
• Big Ben (which I've heard they want to rename in honor of the Queen?)
• See a West End show (possibly Frankenstein, starring Johnny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch)

There are a lot of other things I might be able to do as the program goes on, but I just don't know what kind of schedule I'm going to have.

One more thing on my must-bring list: a camera.