Off we go! (I hope)

When you're reading this, I'm hopefully on a plane heading west with all of my students and all of our luggage on board. We could also be stuck at an airport, trying to get a dozen students and their professors on a next flight to China, but as I wrote this post before I left the house, who knows.

As the date of departure approaches, I'm beginning to realize more and more how completely un-ready I am for this level of responsibility. What seemed like a great idea back in October and a well-organized trip in March, has suddenly developed arms, legs, and far too many details for anyone to keep track of and keep their head on straight at the same time. There's reminder emails to send out (did you remember to get your shots updated?), excursions to confirm (We can't go to town A on date B, but we can go to town C on date B, although it was scheduled for date A), roommate arrangements to resolve (X wants to room with Y but not with Z, but Z will not room with anyone but X), meal plan issues to figure out (apparently, Chinese universities don't really have meal plans. Or they do, but you don't purchase them in advance. Or you can, but you have to use a special card. They think), and secure flight information to enter for everyone.

Naturally, we have a very capable secretary, who has been tackling most of these issues. But at the end of the day, she will back in Georgia when we're out there in China with ten or so lovely, bright, enthusiastic, but also young, inexperienced, and possibly naive students.  Students whose parents really want them back. In one piece. But who will probably try to, at least at one point during the program, try to achieve the exact opposite.

People, it's a scary proposition. One that has woken me up several times over the past few weeks. In my dreams, I've had students get on the wrong plane, lose their passport, get lost and/or robbed, and I think we've all missed our flights at least ten times.

I mean, I can handle getting myself across the ocean. It involves some stress, an outright rejection of any flights that stop in Paris, and a possibly unrealistic fear of losing my luggage, but I'll get there in the end. I can, if needed, even get myself and my family across large distance. That involves a lot less verbalizing of above-mentioned stress, and a lot more coffee, but it too can be done. But twelve students? None of whom I can tell to "Sit right there right now and do not leave that spot or I will have your hide"? I'm honestly not sure how that will work out.

Fortunately, I'm not the head honcho of this caravan. That honor belongs to another Professor who has been running the exchange program for a few years now, and who has weathered several short-term exchanges. So I do have a plan, at least for the travel portion of the program, and this plan involves, wait for it, to let him do all the worrying instead of me. Pretty freaking brilliant, if I say so myself. I am simply putting a worrying-embargo on myself starting this morning until we set foot in China.

Obviously,  I'll help out, I'll step in when needed, but I will not worry about the fact that we have a one-hour layover in one of the busiest US airports on the way out. I will not worry about the fact that not all of us are seated together on the major flight. I will not worry about whether or not everyone's luggage is correctly labeled, and I will not worry about how to get to the hotel in Beijing. I will shepherd, herd, count, locate restrooms, water fountains, restaurants, and gate numbers, and resolve social issues, but I will let the head honcho do all the worrying. The only thing I will worry about during this twenty-hour ordeal, I promise, is how to locate WiFi so I can get on Skype and wave at husband-dear :)