8.30.2016

6 years after I started this blog, in May of 2010, I find myself here yet again. It’s funny how life comes full-circle, isn’t it? There’s nothing quite so cringeworthy as revisiting your old college self – the True Love Forever of long-distance romances and the Taylor Swift lyrics that, like, just get me. Yikes.

I first opened this page as a way to chronicle my semester abroad in France in the summer of 2010. Since returning home, I’ve ventured further than I imagined – living in Uruguay, an impromptu week in Greece, the Rio 2016 Olympics in Brazil. I’ve cycled through, well, a couple of jobs, finally landing in one that I LOVE which happens to come with a fair bit of domestic travel. I’ve met incredible people and shared my journeys with wonderful companions.

I thought I might start journaling my travels again, if only so I don’t forget all the places I’ve seen. I can’t promise it will be well-written or exciting, but I can promise it will be full. The remainder of 2016 is heavy with destinations: NYC, Calgary, India. I’d also love to revisit Rio and some of the places I traveled recently.

In the meantime, I opened this blog with a quote from my old camp friend Lara. Following her Semester at Sea, she penned an open letter with the following missive. I think it’s only appropriate that I revisit her words. 6 years may have passed, but my desire to seek the world certainly hasn’t:

“I initially approached this journey with a strict daily plan to assure I saw everything, accomplished specific goals, and documented every inch and second. Needless to say, that’s not even a thing. It didn’t take long before I began to regard this whole adventure as a wonderful and tumultuous crash-course in international travel. I crash and crash and crash on the way to wherever it is that I think I’m going, and end up somewhere else, for better or worse, before finding myself in a better spot than I could have picked.

So for all things worthwhile in this old earth, for your own sanity, for the love of Buddha, and for the natural yearning for all things that are beautiful, seek the world and everything in it. Any way that you can.”
Lara Calloway