getting ready...

So I'm actually pretty nervous about this trip.  At the moment, I am more nervous and stressed about it than I am excited.  This will be the first time I travel alone (the whole plane ride to London part) and the longest I will have ever been away from home (I mean, not my parents' house, but away from my hometown of Gainesville).  I'm trying not to think about it, though.  I've started packing in the form of opening up my suitcase in my closet and throwing stuff in there that I don't want to forget.  I've also started a list of things to remember; things I don't want to pack quite yet since I use them all the time. 

I've got my little mascot in there, smack-dab in the middle of this picture.  It's a little sheep (hence the blog title).  It took me forever to decide on a mascot but I finally chose this little sheep I've had for a couple of years.  She doesn't have a name but I'm open to suggestions....

Ok, so I've explained the random sheep that I packed.  The other stuff tossed in there: paperwork, windbreaker, motion sickness/sleep-inducing pills for the flight, textbook, flip videocamera, London tourbooks... but Twizzlers?!  And two rather large packs of them at that?  Ok, I have an explanation.  So, I have a friend who lives in London, Fran.  We met because she was a foreign-exchange student at UF (where I got my Bachelors) and we lived in the same dorm the year she was here.  Now, I've been asking all of my friends here if they want me to bring them anything from London, so I thought it was only fair for me to ask Fran if she wanted me to bring her anything from the States.  She requested that I bring her some Twizzlers and Diet Mountain Dew.  Well, I don't want to risk the soda exploding in my suitcase but I will certainly make room in my suitcase for Fran's Twizzlers!