The Rocky Road to Dublin

"The words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm for me." 

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When I was younger, I used to have maps taped all over my walls. I would spend hours staring at them, wishing I visit the places on them. Picture a quiet, nerdy sort of fourteen year-old planning theoretical trips, sometime to South Pacific islands, but most of all to Europe. That was me.

I've been a lot of places in the eight years since then. I even took a year off of college to become a traveling Catholic missionary. But the Big Trip I always intended to take to another continent remained just a theory. Until last fall, that is. That was when I finally decided I was sick of waiting for an opportunity to travel to fall in my lap. So I did some research.

In a week I'll be graduating college. I've decided to spend the summer in Spain, working as an au pair and making good use of my Spanish minor. I'll be watching two little kids, a boy and a girl, for a family in Pamplona, a city in northern Spain. Then in the fall I'll return to Texas to begin my time as a graduate student in English.

First, though, I'm spending a week traveling Ireland alone. Am I nervous? Well, yes. But all my best adventures have been preceded by this sense of nervousness, the temptation to turn back, the hearkening of a good book in a familiar room where no one will ask me to talk to strangers. And each time I have stubbornly refused to give in I have grown a little braver. Besides, I know that if I didn't go I would never forgive myself. So I am going to Ireland.

America, land of my birth, God willing I will see you again with the changing of the seasons. And to all those reading this, I very much appreciate prayers for safe travels.