It’s not that I wasn’t curious about other places. I have memories as a child of standing in my parents garage, staring at a world map that hung there. Splayed across the pastel-colored continents were little red pins, marking my father’s travels. What would it be like to be in those far off places, I wondered, but just as quickly I would turn and run to our backyard to play. Why would I need to travel when all the joy and happiness I knew was found right there at home?

It’s that sort of mentality, combined with a fair deal of shyness, that kept me close to home for most of my life. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I have a very different philosophy about travel today. So what gives? What happened between the Saturday morning, cartoon missing tantrums and taking a year off to travel the world?

A rash decision made my final year of college.

Checking out what I looked like as a study abroad student 11 years ago

Driven by a foolish desire to impress a worldly boy, I signed up to study abroad for a year. Sadly, the boy remained unimpressed but it was a decision that changed my life.

As a lifelong lover of old masters (that’s art-speak for guys that painted a long, long time ago), I chose to study in the ground zero of Renaissance Art: Florence, Italy. I shared an apartment with seven – that’s right – seven other girls, just five minutes from the Duomo, Florence’s central cathedral. The location was unreal, the roommates were amazing and the wine flowed like $2 magnum bottles should. Wine aside (sort of), the experience was a once in a lifetime slap in the face. Finally I understood what all the travel hype was about.

I came home alive, buzzing with the love of travel, thirsty for more. It took that initial step out the door – to Italy, in my case – to see what traveling is about. It’s not just a pin on a wall map (though you can be sure I’m going to have one of those in my future garage). It’s a glimpse of what else is out there: the amazing people, the awful people, the delicious food, the crazy there’s-no-way food stuffs, the foreign culture that feels just like home and the culture that opens your eyes.

Sharing the study abroad experience with me were seven amazing women – who ten years after our tear-filled good-byes, I was able to meet up with again recently in New York. Many of them are married. Some have children. All of them are just as great as I remembered them. Ladies, if it wasn’t for our time together 11 years ago, I wouldn’t have had the courage to see the world.

Thank you.

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