before it all began…

Before it all began I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know what the future would hold… and this is what I had to say..

 

(July 31, 2014)

I can not believe I am about to move to a foreign country . Tomorrow I will be on a plane flying to Spain. Not just for a vacation but to actually live there. My head has not fully wrapped around this yet. Moving to a foreign country and living my life is something that both terribly excites me and scares me. However, I feel that this is something I need to be doing right now. My entire life this is something I have dreamed of doing but it never felt like something that could be feasible, yet here I am preparing for my trip.

It is just so surreal to me since only 2 years ago was my first time even leaving the country. Going away to college was a big step for me I had never been far from home. Going to college taught me how much I loved the independence and freedom of being on my own. Then traveling abroad my junior year of college everything changed. I went to Panama City, Panama for a month and fell in love. Not just with the place itself but with experiencing a new language and culture. Everything about traveling intrigued me and I knew that I had to do it again. Then this past winter of my senior year I did another study abroad program. This one was different, it was a traveling program where we traveled throughout Spain and Italy experiencing many different cities. I fell in love with Spain the second I arrived and I immediately new one day I would be back. I wasn’t sure exactly which city but there was no doubt in my mind that some part of my life would be lived in Spain. Each city we visited as I toured the city and became familiar with it I would ask myself, is this the place I could live. I loved each city more than the next but then we arrived in Barcelona and I knew that this was the place I was going to live. As I walked around Barcelona I felt a comfort and a familiarity. When I left I wasn’t sad because there was absolutely no doubt in my mind I would be back.

To me there is something magical about the city of Barcelona, it has everything I love wrapped up in one city and I am beyond excited this is the place I will now be living.  The future is extremely uncertain right now, but for now it excites me. I know at times it will be very difficult but living in this amazing place will definitely make it extremely worthwhile.

 

And boy was I right… little did I know that this was the start of an adventure, an adventure that almost 3 years later I would still be living… and loving (almost) every moment of it