After the whirlwind Thursday last week where everything fell into place for my next 3 years of life in a matter of hours, the repercussions hit hard over the weekend.
First off, I wanted to make sure I’d spoken to all the people that matter before plastering the news all over my Facebook and Twitter pages, so I spent a couple of days chasing down all the people who would be directly affected by the decision, including TJ, my wonderful boss at the Grove who helped me enormously by giving me my first job post-transplant with the Youth Theatre there. I also spoke to PC, the YT leader at the Grove, and to a couple of my friends, including a very close friend whose wedding I will now miss as it falls in the middle of my first week at LIPA.
I think what shocked me the most was that not one person sounded let down, disappointed or upset by it at all. The response was uniformly and heart-warmingly brilliant – everyone was so excited that I’ve finally got this chance. As soon as I’d announced it on Facebook I was inundated with messages of support and congratulations and people wishing me well.
Right now I’m more excited than a child on the first Christmas Eve they fully understand the implications of the following day – I’m absolutely loopy about it all. I do, however, have an awful lot to do.
In our wisdom, K and I decided at the start of summer that we needed a really special holiday away to celebrate our new freedom, so we booked ourselves 2 weeks in Hawaii – a truly dream holiday to spend time together, chilling out and relaxing.
Neither of us can wait, but we leave on the 1st September and return on the afternoon of the 13th. I then have to be at LIPA for 9am on the 14th, which is to say the least a bit of a rush. My first day is now no doubt going to pass in a haze of jet-lag and exhaustion, I just hope I can manage to hold some form of conversation with the people I meet.
What it also means is that I have to have everything sorted for uni by the time we leave for Hawaii giving me precisely 12 days from the day I was accepted to square everything from accommodation to finance away. That’s now just 8 days. When we went on holiday to the Caribbean when I was younger, we used to be told numerous times how they consider that “rushing is what mats are made from”. This week I’ve discovered and will no doubt have drummed into me that the same rule does not apply to the UK – and especially not to country-fleeing uni students.