Two and a half weeks out, and I'm feeling antsy! One of my favorite things to do when gearing up to travel is to look back on some of the other experiences I've had and re-live the total awesomeness that is traveling. It helps to fulfill the wanderlust and also keep me excited for the new things to come. So, in light of that, let's look through some photos of said awesomeness.
This photo is waaaay old, but from one of the first times I went anywhere all by myself. I was... sixteen? My best friend Allie had moved to Atlanta, Georgia the summer before our freshman year of high school and I went to go visit her a few times. On this trip the two of us drove to South Carolina where we stayed at her aunt's lake house and proceeded to drink Smirnoff Ice and then whip jet skis around the lake all day every day... oh to be sixteen again. On the way back to Reno I got super lost in the Atlanta airport and cried and some very nice man helped me find the right terminal on the other side of the airport. Travel lesson number one learned: when all else fails, cry.
This is me and some hot gay babes in San Francisco. My freshman year of college my friend Lyni (third from the left with the cheesy tourist t-shirt) invited me to go to SF with her, her two best friends and their girlfriends for the weekend. Needless to say this was an eye-opening experience. Clubbing in the Castro, anyone? If you've never experienced the world's greatest gay city with some super fun lesbians, I recommend you do so ASAP. You'll get sandwiched between drag queens, put dollar bills in some assless chaps, and lose your voice by the end of the weekend. It'll take you three weeks to recover once you get home, but it'll be so. worth. it.
Hanging out in the Dirty Punt! The summer after my freshman year of college I studied abroad for the first time in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It was my very first time out of the country, and it changed my life. I know that sounds totally cliché and corny, but it's really true! I've never gotten over the wanderlust I acquired there. These are my amazing host parents, Laila and Edgar, who put up with my sad, broken Spanish, my cultural awkwardness, my inability to come home quietly at nighttime, and my multiple tropical diseases. And somehow they loved me through all of it! This picture is from my 20th birthday. It was my last night in the Punt. They threw me a little birthday party, we took a billion pictures of us together, and then we all cried and laughed and hugged and said in different languages how we would miss each other.
While in Puntarenas, I found myself a wild Australian soulmate named Jean. The two of us instantly fell in love, and she invited me to backpack north to Mexico with her and her brother Bill. Without hesitation, I canceled my plane ticket back to the US, much to my mother's dismay, and spent two months after my study abroad program traveling with these crazy Aussies. I am forever grateful to the opportunity they provided me with, and they will always hold a special place in my heart. At that point, they were much better traveled than I was, and without them I wouldn't have been able to do any of the things I did. While I never actually made it to Mexico, I did make it through most of the countries in Central America and the culture, people, and poverty I witnessed shook up my world. This picture is from Playa el Tuno, El Salvador, which was a much welcome refuge after crossing the Honduras/El Salvador border and trying to navigate our way through San Salvador without getting kidnapped, robbed, or killed.
My sophomore year of college I got a ridiculous urge one night to take a road trip to visit my friend Shari in San Luis Obispo. The next day I woke up at the crack of dawn and drove over the mountain without any idea of what I was actually doing. It was March, but driving over the Sierras in March is like driving over them in the dead of winter. I got stuck in a blizzard and then my windshield washer fluid ran out, so I had to pull over on the side of the freeway every ten minutes to wipe off the windshield with a towel I had brought along while cars sped past me at 70 mph. I also got lost in the middle of the California countryside, where the only living creatures I saw for a few hours besides myself were cows. I did eventually make in to SLO where Shari and I had a blast, and I also learned a few things along the way: 1. Bring a map, 2. It snows a lot ALWAYS in the mountains, 3. Spontaneous solo road trips are awesome and totally necessary and getting lost/almost dying is half the fun.
One October I went to Austin, Texas with my roommates for the Austin City Limits music festival. We stayed with my cousin Alli (center), who is one of the funniest and smartest people I know. Alli is also an insatiable vagabond, and one night while we were laying in her bed telling travel tales between fits of giggles she told me how her family was going to Turkey the next summer to visit her dad's side of the family. In classic form I told her how I wanted to go, she said I should and then I went back to Reno and wrote my aunt an email asking her if it'd be okay. By some divine intervention she said yes, and I found myself heading to Turkey with them in the summer. We spent a month there visiting their family, traveling through a ton of different regions, being woken up at the crack of dawn every morning by the mullah's call to prayer, eating the best food of my life, learning completely unhelpful Turkish phrases like "I like watermelon sweetheart", falling in love with the generous, warm people we met, and trying to be conservative enough to satisfy Alli's eighty-something-year-old grandma. This picture is from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Notice how nice and conservative the good little Turkish girl is in the middle with her bra straps hanging out.
This photo is waaaay old, but from one of the first times I went anywhere all by myself. I was... sixteen? My best friend Allie had moved to Atlanta, Georgia the summer before our freshman year of high school and I went to go visit her a few times. On this trip the two of us drove to South Carolina where we stayed at her aunt's lake house and proceeded to drink Smirnoff Ice and then whip jet skis around the lake all day every day... oh to be sixteen again. On the way back to Reno I got super lost in the Atlanta airport and cried and some very nice man helped me find the right terminal on the other side of the airport. Travel lesson number one learned: when all else fails, cry.
This is me and some hot gay babes in San Francisco. My freshman year of college my friend Lyni (third from the left with the cheesy tourist t-shirt) invited me to go to SF with her, her two best friends and their girlfriends for the weekend. Needless to say this was an eye-opening experience. Clubbing in the Castro, anyone? If you've never experienced the world's greatest gay city with some super fun lesbians, I recommend you do so ASAP. You'll get sandwiched between drag queens, put dollar bills in some assless chaps, and lose your voice by the end of the weekend. It'll take you three weeks to recover once you get home, but it'll be so. worth. it.
Hanging out in the Dirty Punt! The summer after my freshman year of college I studied abroad for the first time in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It was my very first time out of the country, and it changed my life. I know that sounds totally cliché and corny, but it's really true! I've never gotten over the wanderlust I acquired there. These are my amazing host parents, Laila and Edgar, who put up with my sad, broken Spanish, my cultural awkwardness, my inability to come home quietly at nighttime, and my multiple tropical diseases. And somehow they loved me through all of it! This picture is from my 20th birthday. It was my last night in the Punt. They threw me a little birthday party, we took a billion pictures of us together, and then we all cried and laughed and hugged and said in different languages how we would miss each other.
My sophomore year of college I got a ridiculous urge one night to take a road trip to visit my friend Shari in San Luis Obispo. The next day I woke up at the crack of dawn and drove over the mountain without any idea of what I was actually doing. It was March, but driving over the Sierras in March is like driving over them in the dead of winter. I got stuck in a blizzard and then my windshield washer fluid ran out, so I had to pull over on the side of the freeway every ten minutes to wipe off the windshield with a towel I had brought along while cars sped past me at 70 mph. I also got lost in the middle of the California countryside, where the only living creatures I saw for a few hours besides myself were cows. I did eventually make in to SLO where Shari and I had a blast, and I also learned a few things along the way: 1. Bring a map, 2. It snows a lot ALWAYS in the mountains, 3. Spontaneous solo road trips are awesome and totally necessary and getting lost/almost dying is half the fun.
One October I went to Austin, Texas with my roommates for the Austin City Limits music festival. We stayed with my cousin Alli (center), who is one of the funniest and smartest people I know. Alli is also an insatiable vagabond, and one night while we were laying in her bed telling travel tales between fits of giggles she told me how her family was going to Turkey the next summer to visit her dad's side of the family. In classic form I told her how I wanted to go, she said I should and then I went back to Reno and wrote my aunt an email asking her if it'd be okay. By some divine intervention she said yes, and I found myself heading to Turkey with them in the summer. We spent a month there visiting their family, traveling through a ton of different regions, being woken up at the crack of dawn every morning by the mullah's call to prayer, eating the best food of my life, learning completely unhelpful Turkish phrases like "I like watermelon sweetheart", falling in love with the generous, warm people we met, and trying to be conservative enough to satisfy Alli's eighty-something-year-old grandma. This picture is from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Notice how nice and conservative the good little Turkish girl is in the middle with her bra straps hanging out.
