The bag I will be bringing
As I sit here on my laptop in the middle of my parents kitchen I begin to reflect on my life starting at the young age of 11. I was brought to Tuscaloosa in the 4th grade when my dad received a job offer to be an engineering professor at The University of Alabama. Before I knew it my family and I packed up our things and headed down south to start a new life in the land of Dixie where the air was warm and the tea was sweet. When it was finally time to enroll in college there was no hesitation to make The University of Alabama my home for 4 more years. Having stayed in my hometown for my college education I never caught that “leaving the nest” feeling that most of my peers received when leaving for college even though my family frequently visited our relatives around the country, but now I know what that feeling of leaving the nest feels like, that mixture of excitement and fear. The feeling is amplified quite a bit because I’m not just leaving the nest but the whole tree where our nest sits, aka the USA. I am very blessed though because this is not just a study abroad in Milan, Italy (where I’ll be studying for the next 4 months) but also a trip around Europe before I begin my studies. Some of the places I’ll be going is Greece, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, and Lithuania which is where my grandfather migrated from during WWII. I plan on seeing it all and doing even more during this trip that can easily be said to be the biggest and greatest trip of my life. I want to take something more from this trip, something that goes beyond site seeing and studying but shapes myself as a human being. I think this might just be the trip I’m looking for.