Guess what I'm doing

I'm going to Europe this summer! YAY!

I get to do a study abroad program in Italy! YAY!

I get to go to live in Florence, Italy for a month! YAY!

Okay so I am going, once again, to Europe for two and a half months this summer. That means that starting May 20th, I am going to be in adventure mode again! I love adventure mode, living out of a backpack, eating apples for lunch every day for a week, wearing your shoes out, going shopping for cheap clothes, buying too many books, meeting awesome people, eating really rick food, gaining ten pounds, seeing your friends and relatives you have not seen in a couple of years. I love it.

Yet, this time, roughly three years since adventure number one, I have the love of my life staying here in Colorado while I go travel. BOO!

I sound like an awful girlfriend, and feel like one too. I mean I love Ryan to death, and it is hard for us to spend a few nights apart, let alone two and a half months. We did long distance the first year we were together, and it sucked! Two to three weeks apart at a time, daily phone calls, lonely nights where all I wanted where his arms around me and to hear him breath, because I had such a crappy day. So, long-distance was bull shit, but we survived, and here we are today, with our house, new car, his daughter half the time, and we are all really happy. We have a little family and a home, and I do not see that all falling apart any time soon, so it feels a little weird to leave it for a couple of months. Damn it I am going to miss my people!

I know we will be fine though, we have skype, which we did not have in 2011 because I could not afford internet at my apartment and we both had shitty computers with no webcam. But this time we have new, awesome computers and webcams and can chat to our hearts delight! This time we also have been together a lot longer, to establish rituals and to know what the other one needs, and to be a better partner for the other one. So, that will be easier! Therefore, some tears and some heartache, I believe, will make our relationship stronger in the long run, knowing, that no matter the curve ball, we can survive, and thrive through everything life gives us.

The worst part though is that for once, I have the money for Ryan to come and travel with me for a little while in England, but he can not leave work for more than a few days or it all goes to hell in a hand basket. So, what is the point of paying for a $1000 plane ticket, if he would have to turn around and go home the next day? As he put it though "we will have many other adventures together" and yeah, he is right, I'm just 22 and want everything right now!

Anyway, I'm stoked for the trip and plan on writing about it a lot while I am there. So, stay tuned folks!

My Plan B

            My plan B changes a lot, I could say today I think I would want to open a food truck and sell awesome yummy gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, peskatarian food, so that people like me who have a hard time eating out and not getting sick, can actually eat something and not be in bed with a stomach ache all night.

Then there is my true plan B with is to become a professor. My real plan A is to become an international journalist of some sort, traveling, writing stories, meeting new people, trying to break down borders and make the world seem like a closer more connected place. I really want to do this! I want to take amazing photos of tribal life in Africa have them splayed in full, vivid color in National Geographic. I want this so bad that I have panic attacks from time to time, fearing that this goal is too much.

So, plan B is to teach. Since I am a History and Journalism major I could teach either one, goal one is to get a Journalism masters so that Plan A may be more reasonably attained. However, if that all goes to shit, like some of these grand schemes do that people make, then I will look into other options.

Teaching does not seem so bad, if you can find a good university to take you, pay you a decent wage etc. Journalism teaching could be alright, branding the next group of people to try to do what I wanted, and trying not to be cynical or bitter about it. I could respect their dreams and aspirations, secretly wanting to tell them it is one big lie and they will never become anything, because, I plan on being very bitter if I have to fall back on teaching.

The other option would be to become a history graduate student, which could be kind of cool, I could focus on something I am really passionate about and really specifically interested in like Medieval Europe. I have a good friend that was a history professor for a while, she liked it, she enjoyed teaching college kids, so maybe I could stomach that a bit better. I mean what do you really get to do with a history degree? Unless you have something else with it, or get a masters, and somehow land working at a museum. Which, museum work is kind of fun, I have worked at two different ones, in the gift shop, which is interesting. Thus, maybe the research department could be equally as fun. I mean museum people are kind of a special breed of geek.

Okay, so what I am really saying is that I do not, under any circumstances, want to go to Plan B and I will do just about anything to avoid it. So even if I do not get to be the next Anthony Bourdain, or Samantha Brown, or Elizabeth Gilbert, maybe I can get a job writing newsletters for a museum, or a small article in a paper, or taking wedding photos or…I think I have too many plan Bs.