The Adventure Begins

The Adventure Begins... This adventure has been in the works for many years. What I mean by that, is ever since I could remember I have had two dreams; The first to have a private island and the second to travel the world. So here I am 20 years old living one of my dreams (traveling).

Senior year of high school one can expect the same question countless times until a response is ingrained in your head. This question is "what are your plans after high school?". My response changed many times throughout the year, of which university I was attending, but what remained constant is I always said: "I plan on studying abroad." This statement was always followed by a response along the lines of "Man, good for you, I wish I traveled when I was young." or "I wish I could travel." Dan Willey has a great quote that says, "Too often, we miss out on opportunities in this life because we were too busy waiting for them to fall into our lap that we missed them tapping on our shoulder.” It is my belief that many of the people with this response think that opportunity is given, not created.

Not long after I started at the University of Minnesota Duluth I was asking questions in the Study abroad office and doing research. The amount of study abroad programs was so overwhelming that I ended up just picking what will be the best option and ran with it. Looking back now there might have been better options but I don't regret my choice. Here is a link to another post which will contain an ongoing list of studying abroad advice that I will update regularly. ( ) The gist is that going through a third-party company instead of a University entails much more work than I expected. By the end of the school year, all was in place. My final decision was to study abroad with a company called CEA for an academic school year in Seville, Spain. This decision had mixed reviews from family and friends responses ranging from "That is amazing good for you." to "Why do you have to go for a year?" My response usually was something like "Go big or go home. I don't want to regret not staying longer."

The summer went fast having at one point three jobs. Working full-time at Launch Film and Video, Pier 465 (restaurant), and cutting grass when I had time. Halfway through summer I decided to have three jobs was too much and retired from the restaurant biz. It hit me that I was leaving for 9 months while I was camping with some friends in the Boundary Waters. That was about two weeks before I left and from then on the excitement grew and grew.

On September 5th I departed from my house in Green Bay, Wisconsin at roughly 4:45 am. My flight delayed because the plane was "broken" word choice by the airport employee. I thought to myself, "Nice, I won't even make it to Chicago." I made it to Chicago, then to Boston, then Lisbon, and finally to Seville. Lisbon was an interesting time because while I was standing in line a man tried to strike a conversation. The only problem was is I don't speak Portuguese. That went on for a while exchanging very general ideas from what I remember I understood he was visiting from Brazil to see some family.

Once I finally arrived in Seville I was running off 1 hour of sleep in the past 48 hours and I learned I can go without much sleep for about a week. The first week was full of orientations and activities then going out to the bars and discos. I averaged about 4 hours of sleep each night. Going out until 3 am and having to wake up at 7 is not ideal for recovering from brutal jet lag.

This is just the start of the adventure with more to come. I look forward to the opportunity to obtain an global perspective on life and to grow as a person.