Before I left for my trip in Ecuador I went through 3 phases. 1: Excitement 2: Nervousness and 3: A feeling of being ready. The first phase was sheer excitement. I had always wanted to study abroad, and I’ve never been to South America. I was so excited because I felt like this was the perfect program for me and I couldn’t wait to be there. I was so excited for all the fun things we were going to do, places we were going to see and people we would meet along the way. I was particularly excited for the part of the trip where we would go to the Galapagos because I knew we would see a lot of animals I have never seen before. The next phase was nervousness. I began to get really nervous for the trip and my excitement dwindled down.  Whenever I told someone where I was going they would rant and rave about how amazing it was going to be and I would just reply with a “yeah”. I think I was nervous because I was going somewhere new where I would have little to no contact with friends and family from home. I also was nervous about meeting new people, and I was scared I wasn’t going to make any close friends. Before my trip I sat down and wrote out a list of everything I was nervous about. Then I made another list on what I could do to help myself when I got into those situations, or how to “irrationalize” these fears. My next phase was feeling completely ready. After I packed, I was in the mind set of “I’m ready to go!!”I just wanted to be in Ecuador already, and I felt like I was 100% prepared for anything that could come my way.