Countdown...
We're three days away from our trip and fear of the unknown is sinking in hardcore. Fortunately we're able to compartmentalize pretty well, so we take all the anxiety and set it aside while we focus on other things. Then we take a break, and the realization hits again and we start the internal screaming for a while...
Anyway, we keep trying to tell ourselves that we've gone to other faraway places before; it's not a big deal. A lot of people have told us that plenty of people speak English in Paris, and Athena probably knows enough French that we can communicate...but she's nervous, because she hasn't had a lot of opportunity to try it in real-time conversations. Worse comes to worst, I do have a translator app on my phone, and just the fact that French uses the same alphabet as English is already a big comfort. (Incidentally, it was a very long time before we stopped getting similarly freaked out about going to Japan, and we translate from Japanese into English for a living. Obviously the language barrier is not the real problem.)
Sometimes I even manage to squash the fear enough to just genuinely be excited, because we're pretty sure this is going to be a great trip. And yeah, we are excited!
...And also busy. We started first draft of our wordy mystery series today, and it continues to be its chatty self. We don't have the energy to push ourselves to finish it before we go, so we're definitely going to have to ask for an extension. Fortunately, it's not due until the day we're getting back from Paris, so we shouldn't have to ask for much of an extension. Our October is shaping up to be pretty busy, though...
Anyway. We're going to Paris! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!
Today I'm thankful for having our hotel booked, finding the Vivillons in the mysterious Elsewhere Forest, getting to watch Miraculer and Oblivio, work going pretty okay considering, and we get to go to Paris in three days!!!
Anyway, we keep trying to tell ourselves that we've gone to other faraway places before; it's not a big deal. A lot of people have told us that plenty of people speak English in Paris, and Athena probably knows enough French that we can communicate...but she's nervous, because she hasn't had a lot of opportunity to try it in real-time conversations. Worse comes to worst, I do have a translator app on my phone, and just the fact that French uses the same alphabet as English is already a big comfort. (Incidentally, it was a very long time before we stopped getting similarly freaked out about going to Japan, and we translate from Japanese into English for a living. Obviously the language barrier is not the real problem.)
Sometimes I even manage to squash the fear enough to just genuinely be excited, because we're pretty sure this is going to be a great trip. And yeah, we are excited!
...And also busy. We started first draft of our wordy mystery series today, and it continues to be its chatty self. We don't have the energy to push ourselves to finish it before we go, so we're definitely going to have to ask for an extension. Fortunately, it's not due until the day we're getting back from Paris, so we shouldn't have to ask for much of an extension. Our October is shaping up to be pretty busy, though...
Anyway. We're going to Paris! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!
Today I'm thankful for having our hotel booked, finding the Vivillons in the mysterious Elsewhere Forest, getting to watch Miraculer and Oblivio, work going pretty okay considering, and we get to go to Paris in three days!!!