today is the day.

my plane is set to leave at 10:30 ET tonight. i will arrive in London at 10:30 (their time) tomorrow morning. WHAT.
i found myself pretty anxious and overwhelmed last night - the idea of totally detaching myself from my comfort zone (which I now define as the United States) had me in a bit of a head-spin.
when i woke up this morning, though, i found the anxious jitters gone, totally replaced by excited, HOLYSHIT jitters. so here i am, with 5 or 6 hours left until i leave the homestead in Putnam Valley, feeling like these next few hours can't go fast enough.

for those of you interested, my rough itinerary is as follows:
Spend November 9th-12th in London, staying with Simon Gale and Roger Tagholm, two friends of the Walrus (aka Papa Kuvach) from his traveling days 30+ years ago. We plan to visit the gravesite of our dearly beloved Karl Marx and the house of Virginia Woolf. These are merely two highlights of what will be two jampacked days of Olde Countrye activities. Full details will come once i'm over there.
on the 12th, we will be flying out of London and into Dubrovnik, Croatia; the MOTHERLAND. We will be spending a week total travelling up the coast of Croatia (right on the Adriatic), spending the Walrus' 58th birthday in Zagreb, the city in which his father, Nikolai Kuvac, was born and spent his childhood.
on the 18th or 19th we will train from Zagreb into Venice, Italy, where we will spend 2 days before heading down into Rome (on the 21st). on the 23rd, the Walrus will be flying from Rome back to London, leaving me to my own Italian devices. He is set to fly back to the U.S. on the 25h, leaving me with exactly one more month on my own in Europe. this is where the fun will begin. (perhaps i should say, this is where the fun will continue.)

The rest of my plans are very loose, allowing plenty of wiggle room as i traipse around on my own. the next two weeks or so will be spent in Italy, making my way to Florence and Pompei, along with other towns that my friend Nora, who is currently studying abroad in Rome, has been brainstorming on. I will also be making my way out to Prague to stay with one very special Ms. Zbiral-Teller (henceforth referred to as "ZT") for who knows how long, then making my way over to the UK and seeing one Vivek Sharma (& Oxford University) and perhaps one Jonathan Edward Emmanuel Brown in Scotland. who knows! the only set dates I have are to be back in England the 21st of December, and to fly out on the 24th.
I will land back in the U.S. December 24th, coming home to see the Kuvac clan, with special guests Micah Litant, Renata Brito, Christopher Brennan and (for a short time) Henry Fischer. Not to mention the Omega reunion taking place sometime between December 26th and January 3rd, when I leave to go back to Hampshire.

Speaking of which, while I'm doing this update, let me include my course selection for Spring 2010:

Writing the Civil War
The History of African Americans & Reparations in the United States
Critical Ethnography
The "PostRacial" Era

YEAH. life is pretty dope right now and I have many of you to thank for this - i am eternally grateful for your compassion, support, excitement, confidence and inspiration. i love you all. (it goes without saying.)

see you on the other side...

here i am.

yup. here i am. getting ready to traipse around.
i leave the country the 9th. get ready everyone.