I have an addiction

I am addicted to traveling. I have a very severe form of the travel bug. I spend a good portion of my days thinking about the places I want to travel. My disease has progressed to the point that I no longer just want to I am addicted to traveling. I have a very severe form of the travel bug. I spend a good portion of my days thinking about the places I want to travel. My disease has progressed to the point that I no longer just want to travel within the United States, I want to travel internationally. In addition, I no longer want to just travel to various places, I want to move there. Visiting and living somewhere are totally different things and you get such a better taste for a culture when you are living there.

My addiction has developed over the past two and a half years as I have done more and more traveling. At one point, during my last semester of my undergrad, I was gone 6 weekends in a row. This was mainly for interviewing at grad schools and checking potential schools out. Since then I have gone on a trip of some sort almost every single month, whether it be to go to a BYU away game, go to Mexico with Kaiizen, go to visit my sister and brother-in-law in Oregon, a family vacation, moving to Alaska, etc. I am deeply indebted to my dad and my student loans, which have allowed me the freedom of travel (mostly my dad—don’t worry I don’t abuse the student loan privilege).

My latest obsession is backpacking through Europe. It seems everyone these days is moving to Europe for a semester or backpacking it. I would say I spend 10% of every day thinking about how/when I can get to Europe. Every time I get a letter or tape or pictures from my brother in the Netherlands, I go a little crazy with jealousy. Apparently the Netherlands is quite the melting pot, and he is meeting people from all over the world. Ever since I went to Brazil with Kaiizen, I have wanted to backpack through Europe. I loved staying at a hostel and I loved using the public transportation down there. I just loved everything about going to Brazil. Well except the headache I had from concentrating so hard to understand what people were saying. It is amazing how much you can get across with just hand gestures though.

I also really want to go on more humanitarian aide trips throughout the world. I am very excited to go to central Mexico this summer with YouthLINC, and I am even more excited that Operation Smile might be there on a mission at the same time so I may be able to check that out for a few hours. I very much want to go on an Operation Smile mission sometime in the near future. The thing I like most about humanitarian aide trips is that you get to interact on a very close and personal level with people who are in so much need and yet have so much spirit inside. You don’t just travel to the tourist places, you get right in there with the people and experience a little bit of what their life is like.

I think what it boils down to is I love discovering new and different things. I love learning about different cultures and seeing what is different between theirs and mine, but also what is similar. I love exploring new areas. Even here in Utah, I am always going on drives just to get lost and discover a cool spot that I haven’t been to before.

In my dream world, I would love to move to one place for 6 months (from January to the end of July) and then move back to Utah for 6 months (just in time for football season). However, there are several things that are stopping me from my travel dreams. (A) I’m broke. (B) I’m in school. (C) It is very hard to live somewhere long enough to form attachments to the people and the place, and then pick up and leave. Keeping in touch is very difficult, and a phone call just isn’t the same as personal interaction. I have missed my friends in Alaska and Hawaii a lot. (D) I want to be close to my family. It is hard on me to have my brother so far away and my sister and brother-in-law and nephew in a different state. When Heather and Landon lived in Provo I would go over to their apartment a few times a week and just hang out with them and I loved it. I also want my nephew to grow up knowing his Auntie really well. In addition, it is hard enough on my parents that I don’t live at home. I’m pretty sure they hate it when I move away. (E) The time is rapidly approaching that I am going to have to get a real job and settle down. I will no longer have 4 week Christmas breaks, or spring/fall break, or summer internships. Boo. Except for the money part that comes along with a real job. (F) Eventually I am going to have to get married. Haha let me rephrase that. Eventually I would really like to get married. But it is difficult to meet someone when you are moving around so much.

In short, if you see me and I don’t appear to be paying attention to what is going on around me, I am probably thinking about travel or football.

Some people blog about their political opinions, I blog about this...

I fell asleep in the bathroom at the Institute the other day. I was just chilling there with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hand and the next thing I knew I was waking up because the automatic motion-sensing light had turned off. I couldn't have been out for more than 5, maybe 10 minutes max though. Somehow I can fall asleep in a bathroom and yet it takes me hours to fall asleep in my bed. Maybe my bed is too comfortable.

Sisterly Memories

Since my sister asked me to update my blog, I thought I would post a memory of us. The first memory to pop into my head was, of course, our choreographed dances on the trampoline to “Kiss From A Rose” by Seal, in the hopes that the neighbor boy would see us and fall in love.

The next memory I thought of was when she and I were riding our bikes past said neighbor boy’s house. Heather turned to wave at him and ran smack into the back of a parked van. The boy came running over and asked if she was okay and Heather responded with, “Ya, I think it is okay” as she patted her bike. Oh man, I can’t help but laugh hysterically at the memory of it.

The other memory that immediately popped into my mind was the drive home from Thanksgiving in Idaho in 2004. It had snowed a lot 2 days before we were supposed to drive home, but on the day of the drive the roads were dry and clear. Well I was driving my Jeep home and my sister and brother were with me. My parents were about 10 minutes behind us in my dad’s truck. We were driving along, everything was fine and dandy. The speed limit was 75 mph, so I was going about 80 mph. About an hour into the drive, we came around a corner and I saw snow on the road just ahead of us, but only on the fast lane. I started to change lanes and braked to slow down a little. Bad decision. We hit the snow when I was still braking and my tires were still angled to change lanes. We started spinning in the middle of the freeway. Luckily the car behind us was far enough behind that it didn’t hit us. We did probably 3 donuts on our side of the freeway, then started spinning towards the barrow pit, which mind you is shaped like a V for drainage purposes and also to prevent cars from going onto the opposite side of the freeway. So we’re spinning along and get into the barrow pit and I can feel the car start to tilt like we are going to roll over. Miraculously, the car didn’t roll and I swear it is because Heather was in the car and the blessing carried over to the rest of us. We did a couple more donuts and stopped maybe 4 or 5 feet away from the oncoming traffic. Surprisingly, all of us kids were very calm at this point—no one was freaking out or hyperventilating or anything. Our first thought was, “We gotta get out of here before Mom and Dad drive by.” I put the Jeep into 4 Lo and we started trying to drive out onto the freeway in the direction that we had been going, but we were just sliding back down into the barrow pit. My brother was going to get out and push, but he couldn’t find his shoes so he was going to go out there bare foot. I can’t remember if he actually did, but I don’t think so. Anyway, we ended up getting out onto the freeway going the opposite direction as we came. Literally about 20-30 seconds later we see my parents drive past on the other side of the freeway. About 20 seconds later we get a call from them saying, “We saw some tire tracks from someone who drove off the side of the road, so be sure to slow down and be careful.” They thought that we were behind them and they didn’t notice us on the other side of the road! Little did they know… Then I started freaking out and made Heather drive the rest of the way home. THE END.