So this is it, I’ve left and I’m on my way. This time tomorrow I’ll have arrived in Grenoble, and yeah, I still don’t have anywhere to live (ie I’m homeless, SDF, whatever you want to call it, it still sucks) so I’ll be staying in a hotel for a couple nights. Which yes is still slightly daunting but I’m looking on the positive side in that I get to see the flats and meet the people before signing anything. Now while I realise this isn’t exactly the ideal situation, I’ve accepted that it is what it is and there’s not much I can do about it, but when people keep saying to me, “You don’t have anywhere to live?! What the hell Jewel, that’s pretty stupid,” etc etc, it does start to freak me out the teeniest bit.

I’ve been on the road for two days now and it’s had its ups and downs. The worst bits were definitely Sunday night when I had to say goodbye to most of my friends which wasn’t so fun. And then yesterday morning it was Alex and my family, which was much worse. Probably because most of my friends I only see quite rarely anyway, whether because they’re at uni in other cities or we just don’t have time to see each other as often as we’d like to, so I’ve kinda gotten used to keeping in touch with them in other ways and not seeing them all the time. Anyway I cried a lot yesterday because the fact is no matter how many new friends you make or how much fun you have, you’re still going to miss these people. But I seem to have got over the initial shock of leaving cause today I’m much less sad and much more excited (though still fucking scared).

So yeah, I left yesterday morning, drove down to Hull and got the ferry. This was of course after the car broke down on Sunday (and I mean broke. Not in a fixable kinda way because it’s ancient and has been on the verge of dying for a long time) so had to hire one. Woop. The crossing was pretty horrible because, well, I hate boats with a passion. I hate being in open water like that, I hate feeling trapped, just… hate boats. Plus there was a storm so once I finally got to sleep I woke up being thrown about in my bed. Then at 6am we were woken up by people standing outside our rooms saying “Morning!” until we replied. Fantastic. But hey, we made it to Belgium, where it was bloody cold. Had a couple stops in Brussels and Luxembourg on the way to France and now I’m near Metz, staying with my aunt & uncle for the night. Oh and visited my granny earlier which was nice because I only get to see her about once a year.

And tomorrow it’s up at the crack of dawn once again and heading down to Grenoble, stopping in Lyon just before we get there to visit more family. So this is it, I’m nearly there. It’s a little strange when you’ve spent pretty much the last year thinking about this and planning for it and now it’s finally here and I feel about as unprepared as I could possibly be. And that is despite having spent the last week running around every day trying to get everything sorted out, buying things I’ll need, packing, phoning people and places. But there’s not much I can really do about it now, and although at this moment I’m slightly terrified, I know that once I get over all the new things and the inevitable mistakes I’ll make in the first couple weeks, it’s going to be awesome.

Over & out.