I think everyone really screwed this one for me.

“You’re going to have the absolute best time while you’re there! In a year, your heart will ache for Paris. You’re going to miss it so much,” she said. “You’re about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime,” he said. “You’re going to have the greatest time. Ever. In your life,” they all echoed.

Can we just acknowledge that it’s going to be rather difficult for Paris to fulfill these expectations?  I mean, yeah, sure, it’s a magical place or whatever — it will be especially so to a suburbanite who hasn’t traveled much further than her driveway — but can Paris be so inexplicably amazing that I may was well fling myself off la Dame de Fer at the end of the semester?

I’m fresh on the twenty-first year of my life and you’re all trying to tell me that this is it? This will be the single greatest thing to happen to my existence. This shortened semester in France will open my eyes to the world and slap my lame American lifestyle in the face, dance around on top of it and then spit on it, just for good measure? It’s going to be an experience — that I can’t deny — but it’s becoming more apparent that it will only be as great as I let it be. So simple solution, Jamie: let it be great.

It’s not that easy.

There’s a part of me that wants so badly to be as excited as everyone is for me. There’s certainly a part of me that wants to make it so the money my parents have spent and the money I’m going to spend – money that I don’t have – will be worth it.

Yet, I remain indifferent.

Indifferent.

Even still, as I sit here in seat 34A (excuse the chin pimple and crazy face), roughly four hours into my flight to Charles de Gaulle airport, I haven’t accepted that I’m doing this. That I’ve done this. That I packed most of my life into a suitcase that was 2.5 lbs. over the weight limit for American Airlines, I got on a plane, said goodbye to my family and I left.

“It’ll hit you,” they said.

Well, I hope you’re right, friends.

In the (limited) time I spent fantasizing about this trip, I imagined myself reading in a park, sitting at a café, wandering around, eating bread and cheese, drinking some wine, walking my dog in a fabulous coat. You know, doing Parisian things. I didn’t know where I would get the dog or whom I had to hold up at gunpoint to get the dog or where I would get the gun, but it was going to happen.

I am going to dress nice.

I am going to read.

I am going to learn French!

And then I went out to dinner with some of my friends a few days ago.

In the hour we spent lingering by the doorway in the hip but tiny restaurant waiting for a table to open up, it occurred to me – there is a lot of time in the day. How many times am I going to sit at a café sucking in second-hand smoke before I get tired of it? How much bread can I eat before the two pairs of pants I bring along stop fitting? I don’t have money to buy new pants. Plus, the French are skinny – would they even carry my size? Am I going to have to hire a professional tailor to make me some fleece-lined spandex? How am I going to communicate with him? I DON’T SPEAK FRENCH.

Three months.  I have three months. I don’t have a job to fill out my day. I am going to have too much time to be with myself. It’s not easy to be around me for too long. I don’t know if I can deal with myself for so much of the day without my job and my family to distract me.

I’m not excited to leave. I haven’t been excited. Sure, I talked about this trip for the last few months, volunteering the information about it whenever I had the chance. And, trust me, I had the chance often. At the dentist, to my doctor, at my restaurant. Anytime the subject of school came up organically, I found a way to casually slip the word “Paris” into the conversation. It usually followed, “I’m going to.”

I enjoyed the twinkle of envy I saw in some people. In others, I saw a quick change of opinion about me. “This girl is something different. France? I wish I had had the chance. How adventurous.” That’s what I imagined people thinking, anyway. In reality it was probably closer to, “Look at the douchebag bragging. Give me the damn Chinese food I ordered. I don’t care where you’re going.” It was a game for me. I could tell people I was leaving San Diego, I could buy an excessive amount of winter clothes and coats and convince myself that my trip to France justified it, I could throw a bon voyage party for myself. The only issue was I never truly believed it would happen.

But it is. This weird French guy in 34D on his third serving of wine muttering softly to his Nintendo DS is confirmation. I’m going to France. At least with the lack of expectation as I fly over to Europe, I know I can’t fly home disappointed.

Hopefully in three months, I will have had one of the times of my life. Also, I hope I will have learned that packing for a three-month trip at 3 a.m., five hours before I have to be at the airport, is a shitty, shitty thing to do.