When I commenced this blog it was going to be about me highly researching a three-week trip to Japan next year for the cherry blossom season, and how this is a typical trait for Virgoans. However, during the course of the day, this quickly changed as I received a message from a friend inviting me to her wedding in the USA just a week before my scheduled flight to Japan. Now I’m trying to work out whether I can get there to celebrate, and turn my three-week break into five weeks.
This pretty much sums me and my travel style up, I love the planning and researching aspects, but love the spontaneity so much more.
I think it all started back in 2001, I was getting a bit bored with studying and wanted to backpack through USA for a few months. Let’s just say mum wasn’t too thrilled with the idea and so we compromised on me applying for study abroad for a semester. I went into the office, and we sat down to discuss university choices which I hadn’t even thought of, so I just said “somewhere I can continue studying marine science and where it doesn’t snow”, the response was “I have the perfect uni for you, the University of Miami”. With that, the forms were submitted, and all I could do was wait. Then September 11 happened, I got a call from the Study Abroad office and they said that all exchanges are currently on hold while they assess the risk. Not hearing anything for another month or so, it was put to the back of my mind I was planning for a summer at home, then in the middle of my exams in November, I got a call to tell I had been accepted and I had to be in Miami on the 7th January for orientation. Trying to arrange travel, visa’s, accommodation, and university courses in the space of a few weeks was crazy, I don’t think I even comprehended what was happening, that was until I stepped off that plane in Miami.
Not only was this my first time travelling overseas I was doing it alone for six months at the age of nineteen. Yes, it was scary, but I quickly found out how capable I was and I have not looked back. It also proved to me that no matter what you plan a spanner could be thrown in the works, and what happens after could be just as joyous.
Like getting lost. They say it’s the journey not the destination that matters, and I truly believe this, enjoying the moment whether it’s going right or wrong. On a road trip with friends to the north-west of Australia, we were on time constraints and therefore had the route and timings all planned. On the first night we missed a turn, which meant we were miles away from where we wanted to be, running low on fuel and then found out that I had forgot to pack bread to make sandwiches. It was a great trip with great friends seeing amazing scenery and generally having a blast, but what we remember most of that trip? It was getting lost, the forgotten loaf of bread, and a flat tyre we got, not because they were bad but the resulting journey was not what we planned but it didn’t matter.
So much like my travel style, this entry has completely gone of course, but in essence not only do I get to research a trip to Japan, I get to research what to see and do around New Mexico, a state I am yet to explore in the USA.
If anyone has any recommendations for either let me know.
The Wayfarers Lens 