"Are we there yet?"

No, we're not.

The thing I hate the most about going abroad for a long time is all the fucking paperwork and hassle that's involved. And being the type of person who does everything at the last minute possible, this leads to a lot of unnecessary stress. I still haven't gotten my insurance papers and copies of my passport, for instance. The peeps who were in France last spring wrote that you should sort these things out two months before you leave. Whoops. I'll get to that tomorrow, I promise.

I just got back from moving. It took two days of exhausting work but now it's done. I moved half of my stuff to my parents house and forwarded all my mail there and the rest (hard furniture mostly) I dropped at my new pad. My new pad is plush, almost makes me regret going to France. The view is beautiful (seaside, bitch!) and I'm loving the overall layout. And it doesn't hurt that it's brand spanking new, everything is so shiny and modern. I'm subletting it to the University of Arts here in Helsinki and they found this 40-year-old researcher from Japan to hold the fort for me. She seemed nice enough and I feel pretty comfortable about leaving all my stuff in her care. She didn't strike me as the wildly partying orgy-type :)

I hated my old place towards the end. The walls were really caving in on me since it was so small. And can't say much about the neighborhood, either. Seeing all those junkies and winos made me really jaded. Can't wait till I can move to Arabianranta once I get back from France.

Speaking of which, I finally got this small anticipation thing going on. It hit me when we were watching Amèlie with my family the other day. I guess it was hearing all that French. I started to think that "Hey, I'm actually leaving in like a week!". I had been so distracted by the whole moving thing plus all the exams before that that I kinda had just blocked the whole exchange period out of my system. Now that it's getting closer to my departure I'm actually starting to get a bit exited. I just need to sort a few things out before that, though. Maybe after that I can REALLY get into the travelling mood.

PS. Yes, I know I have been really lazy updating, but I like I said, I'll start updating more frequently once I actually get to France. My next post is probably come from Amsterdam, I have to switch planes there.

PPS. And yeah, I'm doing this in English due to "overwhelming" demand from my English-speaking friends :P Well okay, two or three people said that "eh, I might take a look every once in a while." You'd better!

Till next time.