5 days and counting.

Anyone who loves the Olympics has had this song playing on an endless loop in their head for the past few weeks. I'm half-tempted to make it my ringtone at this point. I suggest you just hit the "play" button and let it run while you read this blog. It'll really add to the mood. 


... I'm kidding.


I still remember the day. Four years ago, fresh out of college, a terrified, twenty-one year old version of me was about to embark on the three year torture-fest known as law school. At that time, in my mind, I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. Law school was fifty miles away from my house. I had to take a two-hour train ride each way to get there, and the workload was more intense than anything else I had ever dealt with. My life before law school was great; I had a great job working for Starbucks, I had a boyfriend who [at that time- KEY PHRASE!] I thought was awesome and I was all around just having a great time. Law school uprooted ALL of that. 


The other thing starting law school kept me from doing was watching the Olympics. In past years, I would glue myself to the TV for two straight weeks and soak up Olympics coverage like a sponge (seriously- I've loved it since I was a kid. I have a great story about 9 y/o me during the 1996 Olympics that I'll have to tell sometime). I wanted to do that for the Beijing Olympics, but for the first time in my life, couldn't. Law school took that from me, too, and for that, I hated it. 


To sum it up, the 2008, 1L in law school version of me knew two things:


1. I hated law school;
2. The 2012 Olympics were going to be in London.


I don't remember what possessed me to do it, but I picked up my phone and texted the BFF. Chances are what possessed me to do it was something random and funny, but the paraphrased version of the conversation went something like this:


Gina: "OMG law school sucks. BTW, we should to go the next Olympics."
Amy: "OMG WE SHOULD!!!"


It didn't happen exactly like that, but it's crazy to think that the last four years of research, planning and preparation started with two little text messages.


You didn't see that wrong- we've been planning this trip for almost four years now. We couldn't do much in the first year or two; we mainly just researched what we needed to do in the future. Things didn't really get going until last year. We spent a lot of time at our favorite locations (Fuzzy's Tacos & Starbucks, mainly) slumped over our laptops, scribbling down plans in our notebooks. Once we figured out which events we wanted to attend, the best place for us to stay and all of the stuff we wanted to see (hint: I pretty much want to see EVERYTHING), however, we knew we had planned the trip of a lifetime.


Just to show how long this has been on our minds, this is a pic we took in Colorado Springs, CO at the United States Olympic Training Center in August 2010:

So here we are. Four years of planning have gone by, and the trip of a lifetime is now a mere 5 days away. Excited doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. My room looks the way you would expect it to: clothes strung everywhere, a suitcase propped up against the wall and the American flag on almost every item set to be packed. Amy and I leave Thursday evening and arrive in London on Friday morning. 


Our friends Jon & Brenda are already there and blogging. Amy is set to blog, as well, and I will post a link to hers once it is up and running. This is the space where I will be blogging about our trip. I'll post updates and pictures about what we do each day- so keep your eyes on this space!