Today was a nasty, cold, rainy, icky day. I didn’t even leave the house. Luckily, a ray of sunshine came through and brightened my day.

A nice flat envelope with the Airmail stamp on it arrived. Inside were my papers from the University of Kent — my deferred acceptance letter, a packet of housing information and a letter I need to sign confirming my place. It was an amazing relief, like coming home to find your chair has been kept warm.

As soon as I send a copy of my passport photo page, my transcripts and degree confirmations from the University of Kansas and my signed letter of intent, I can start working on all those other little details. Getting a FAFSA filed early next year, getting loan paperwork done, applying for housing.

My home next year will be Woolf College, a grad students-only complex. I’ll snag a large bedroom with my own bathrom and share a macked-out communal kitchen. After communal (and I mean communal) bathrooms in Reading, it’ll be nice to have my own loo. I’ll be just up the road from the town centre, which my research and Google-map surveillance shows has necessary amenities such as Boots, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and an Odeon cinema. I’ll figure out the bus routes and become friendly with Canterbury West rail station. I have new bed linens picked out and an eye on a student rail pass.

I have my classes more or less picked out. I’ll have six over the year: European Union policy, human rights policy, international security, political economy, research methods and an international relations survey course. I’ve even scouted all of my books on Amazon — I can get EVERY book for EVERY class for the cost of what the books for ONE class would cost at a first-run bookstore. Yeah, I’m good.

So, after a couple of months of feeling a little blue over my decision to defer, I now feel excited, refreshed and optimistic.

I set up a countdown Widget in Dashboard today. 320 days until Sept. 14, 2010, the day my parents, grandmother and I leave for London on a family holiday and to get me settled. I’ll get settled in Canterbury (about an hour and a half southeast of London by train) on Sept. 19, and Freshers Week and orientation starts Sept. 20. Sept. 27 is my first day of classes, and graduation is in July at Canterbury Cathedral.

Let’s roll.