When I leave...

She stepped onto the plane. She had been on planes so many times before, but this time it was different. She was going somewhere new. Although she was still on American soil, she felt like she had crossed the threshold to a new land already. Putting her bags in the overhead bin, she sat down in her seat, already impatient to be in Europe. Boarding seemed to take forever as passengers meandered onto the plane, their faces set in grim, businesslike expressions. She wanted to shake them, to yell at them, to scream at them in her excitement. She wanted them to know that they were going to the Old World, the place she had always dreamed about but had only just began her expedition towards. How many times had she read the works of the ex-pat writers who had lived in Paris? How many times had her eyes glanced over Keats's poetry and yearned to see his England so that she could know where he got his inspiration from? How many times had she pored over Austen's Pride and Prejudice, yearning to take a tour of the Lake District? And finally, she was headed there--headed to the place where she had yet only dreamed of. And finally, the plane door was shut, the seat-belt sign was on, and the plane was rolling onto the runway...