“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
I love to travel. I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid. From a very young age, my parents began taking me places such as my grandparents’ house in Pennsylvania (3 1/2 hour trip from my home) and my other grandparents’ house in Texas, all via a car. I loved beautiful West Virginia (It’s called “Almost Heaven” and “West by God” for a reason), but I always liked the idea of seeing other places around the world. It’s too big to only stay in one place for your whole life.
It all started with road trippin down to good ole’ North Carolina with my best pal, Kotch. Her real name is Melissa, but her last name is German and everyone always mispronounces it so I call her by the mispronunciation. But anyway, we either started this tradition the summer before our freshman year of college or the summer before our sophomore year of college. Unfortunately I have a terrible memory, but I’m sure she’ll correct me soon enough (aka when she reads this post and most likely makes a comment on it or just to me in a text). My senior year of high school, Kotch and I became best pals/worst enemies and as that happened, her love for Duke basketball rubbed off on me and now I’m a huge Duke fan because of her. Through the Duke fandom, we met two wonderful people named Alavia and Haley who became great friends of ours and who both happened to go to the same school/live closely to each other in North Carolina (at least during the school year). We wanted to visit not only them but Duke itself to actually see it in person. To convince my parents to let me drive us down (they were just paranoid something was going to happen to us on a 6 hour journey down to NC), we put together a ridiculous PowerPoint (don’t get me wrong, at the time it was awesome but we were weird kids lemme tell ya) and then before we knew it we were headed to the beautiful Raleigh/Durham/Cary area. For the first few times we went on our road trips, we stayed in cheap hotels (but hey, anything works on a budget as long as we had a safe and comfy place to sleep..plus we’re poor) until Alavia offered us her guest bedroom in her house, so that’s where we tend to stay whenever we go now.
But basically, all of those road trips we take/have taken to North Carolina result in a few things: Watching scary movies (because Melissa is the worst and hates Alavia and I), visiting Duke’s campus (and sometimes meeting Duke players and getting their autographs/getting them to follow us on twitter–I’ll write about this more in detail in another post!), Eating Cook Out, and laughing obnoxiously over the most random things until at least 1 in the morning. Basically our road trips down to North Carolina either once or twice a year are some of the best times of my life, and I’m appreciative of having such great friends to share those experiences with (including Kotch who somehow keeps me sane while driving for hours upon hours. Shout out to you, pal!)
(From left to right: Alavia, Haley, Kotch and myself at K-ville at Duke right outside of Cameron Indoor Stadium)
Besides North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, I never got the chance to travel somewhere else until my sophomore year when I traveled to the ever beautiful San Francisco. The song doesn’t lie- I definitely left my heart there. I went there on a conference with one of my sorority sisters for a conference for PRSSA, of which we were both members (she was the president and I was the vice-president). Besides attending conferences all day, we familiarized ourselves with the area our conference was in, along with a path to somehow make it to a trolley stop in order to make it to the bay. From the moment I saw her aunt’s house where we were staying, however, I knew that I could live and work in San Francisco and be completely okay with it. Her aunt lived in the suburbs of San Fran that had cute little running paths all throughout it that were perfect to run on during sunset. The whole experience was phenomenal. The only thing I wish we could’ve done was see the Golden Gate Bridge up close, but we still saw it from the Fisherman’s Wharf.
I also wanted to go on a cross-country road trip during one of my summers before I graduated college, but I didn’t have the funds for it. But luckily, because of college, I finally got the opportunity to go to two more places I’ve always been itching to travel to: London (because it’s my favorite city in the world and because of Harry Potter) and Germany (because I took it as a second language from high school and into college, where I achieved a minor in it). Last year over Spring Break I went to London with History Club, while the Spring Break prior to that I went to Germany. Both experiences were amazing in their own ways. The people I spent those trips with and the memories we made while venturing in foreign lands are some that I’ll never forget. Because this post is already so long, I’ll cover each trip separately over the next two weeks on Thankful Tuesday, but for a teaser, I’ll upload one picture I took from each place until you get to read my blogs about them. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell them apart.
Until I post about one of the places above next week, just know that I’m fortunate to have the ability to travel. I know that many people come across the opportunities but can’t jump on them for a variety of reasons, so I’m very thankful for having parents who want to see me travel since they had the opportunity to do so when they were young as well and helped me to live out my dreams by helping me fund my trips to go to both London and Germany.
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