The Haul

As I was nearing my departure from St. Louis, I was getting increasingly sentimental. After all, it's been the place I've called home for almost two years. I left on Saturday when the weather was sunny and beautiful, and I won't be back until January when the weather is cold and dark. Between now and then I've got quite the adventure, but I still had a hard time saying goodbye to SLU. What's funny is that on my second-to-last day, it was so gorgeous outside. I explained to my friends that the weather reminded me of Nova Scotia weather ( aka perfect ). Later that day, one of my friends told me that I must be a good meteorologist, because the Weather Channel had said that it was indeed a Canadian front pushing through. I guess that meant it was time for me to go home. On my last day on campus, I thought it was fitting that the weather was so nice. I had a walk around SLU and realized how much I'll miss it while I'm away. It really is a beautiful place. Through all this, I grew even more excited about my semester in France, because I know it will be there waiting when I get back.

Here I am with my friend Mary ( who is also studying abroad in France next year) right before I got into the car and headed home. please excuse my undone hair... I didn't put much maintenance time in before a 12 hour car-ride.
This past weekend, my dad flew down to St. Louis to help me pack up my apartment and drive up to Toronto... I don't know if he was prepared for the amount of stuff that we had to pack in the car. His comment was, "What do you do... collect clothes?!" Well... I guess you could say I have quite the collection. Oops!
Here he is tucked away in the driver's seat with my stuff in the back.

Then, once I got home, I had a whole car to unpack. Then I had to repack and reorganize. It was not a short process, as I was going through ALL of my stuff. I had to go through not only what I brought home from school, but also what I had shoved into the closet and drawers back at home. The Salvation Army is doing well this week because of all the donations I'm making. So, for the past two days, my life has revolved around packing for China, packing for the trip to Nova Scotia after that, and organizing my things for a semester in France. I'm glad my mom wasn't here to witness this chaos:

Now, I'm awake in our kitchen sipping on some coffee and getting ready for the next day of traveling. My bag is packed, my other stuff is organized, and now I'm just killing time. I woke up super early this morning so that I could be tired by the time I get on the plane... this way I'll be able to knock myself and hopefully get a good 7 hours of sleep. I'm a bit anxious, because I've never flown for more than 7/8 hours. This will be an all-time high at 14 hours! I've got a lot of traveling to do, but by this time tomorrow I'll be in Shanghai!