I am typing this blog post on the plane on my way to Budapest. We have fall break this week where my friends and I will be seeing Budapest, Prague, Vienna, and Poland. We had midterms last week and I am thrilled to finally be able to have a full week of traveling. Though we are here for school, we really do count down the days until we get to take our next trip. Not only are they fun, but I feel like I am to learn so much about myself, the people around me, the city I am in, and just how to handle bumps in the road better.
Something my mom keeps saying to me and all my friends here is that “travel is so good for your soul, you all look the happiest I have ever seen you” and she is spot on with that. We always say here that the best days are the Thursday before we travel. We seem to have the most fun. We have a visible change in mood, and we only have excitement no stress from traveling yet. I have been trying to pinpoint why traveling makes us so happy. I personally feel like it is from the adrenaline of experience something new. I am someone who likes to go go go, so getting to entertain myself with new things every day while traveling makes me so excited. You also experience so many new things, like most places I have never had their traditional foods, I haven’t seen their architecture, and I haven’t ever experienced their culture. I feel like I am just so happy to be fulfilling my curiosity about all these places.
I also think that traveling has been a really good mental exercise for me. You are forced to live in the moment. You really never know what challenges could come up next, so you are always on your toes. For instance, in London, my friend and I had to take a taxi from one terminal to the other because the tube wasn’t going there yet that was more of a challenge, but another example would be when we just wander around Rome and all of a sudden end up at the Trevi Fountain. You also live in the moment more because of the lack of connection with your phone. Here we have phone plans but exclusively for the use of google maps. You never are sitting at the dinner table or on the public transportation texting friends, snapchatting people, or checking your Instagram feed. You are just fully in the moment.
Also, though we know school and academics are very important, travel is giving me the much needed separation between school time and personal time. The environment at Rollins, with living on campus and being around campus on the weekends, can sometimes make me feel guilty for not doing school work. All the traveling and the living situation in Rome is allowing me to sperate myself from academics and allow for me to live in the moment and not constantly think about how I should be in the library or could be getting ahead on some assignment. It is giving me a whole new environment where I can still value academics and put in the work needed to do well but also can take personal time for travel, making dinner at the apartment, or having a gelato trip with all my friends. I have been able to learn the importance of this separation and how it benefits me, and I think I will be able to implement this back at Rollins. I will be able to just live in the moment more and to get experience more things without feeling held back.
