Less than a month away...

Christmas trees are filling living rooms with their fresh pine smell; children are running around frantic asking Santa for just one more toy; teachers are sighing in relief as the last student leaves the classroom; snow parks are open and hundreds flock in their winter gear to ski and sled in the white flurries; and people are snuggling deep into blankets, attempting to battle away the flu everyone seems to be fighting.
Only one more class and then I am done for the semester! Just one more class, but in the last week I have missed more than half of my courses, thanks to a lovely friend of mine called Pneumonia. Pneumonia is still lingering around, I think he wants to make sure I am okay before he departs for his winter slumber. With only one class left, it has become a time for goodbyes. Many of the friends I have shared classes with for the last two years are graduating and moving on to explore different corners of the world, as am I. I am not ready for graduation, but apparently I am ready to explore the world. In less than a month from today, I will be in another country where English is not their first language, where automobiles are a rarity, and where towns are surrounded by medieval walls (built in the 11th and 12th centuries), which even today serve their purpose well.

• Viterbo, Italy: Ancient city in the region of Lazio, roughly 60 miles North of Rome. Population: 61, 473 (+1 more in a little under a month!)

I have begun to read several travel books, but have decided travel books, as helpful as they may be, are not for me. I understand some people may want to be told exactly where to go and what to see, but I think I am a "lost" traveler. I would much rather not know where I am going exactly (of course to quell all of the motherly objections to this statement, I will always travel safely, you have my word), but simply let the streets lead me along and tell me their stories themselves. One can find a more authentic introduction to a city or town wandering aimlessly in comparison to a guided tour, which will only show you the "bright" parts of the city instead of the parts tourists usually turn a blind eye to anyways. However, those "dark" parts still make the character of a place and are worth seeing. The broken statues, the closed up shops, cast away cars, etc. Everything not fitting in with the Martha Stewart view of the world is exactly what I want to see. Of course, I will see the bright parts as well, and most likely take wayyyyy to many photos, but the cast off sections of towns will not go ignored by me.

The Months Before...

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said to "Not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." My trail has not been definitively laid out in front of me, but slowly the road signs are becoming clearer, more defined, although still somewhat questionable in the direction they point me to.


One of the first signs I saw read: Yield
Growing up surrounded by "grandmother" oak trees and gold-cluttered creek beds my family's favorite "free" entertainment quickly became car rides. While being sandwiched between my two older sisters in the back of our green Volvo, ceremoniously deemed "the green pickle," I would watch out at the whizzing green scenery (usually trying to refrain from feeling nauseous or asking my father for the fifth time if there was somewhere we could pull over so I could relieve myself, and his horrifying reply "Look's like there's a nice tree right over there!"). I remember one such road trip that we took as a family when I was probably around six years old. The entire drive up into the Mountains (granted we live in the mountains, but there are always bigger and bolder and colder mountains to drive to and stand in awe of) my sisters were obsessed with singing TLC's "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls." I hummed along making up my own song which to my untrained ear sounded identical to the one pouring out of my sister's yellow walk-man's earphones (the cassette being ripped out of the car's cassette player when asked to be replayed for the fifth time). After a day stomping around in the woods, sledding down a snow-covered hillside on a plastic picnic table cloth, and counting the rings of a fallen tree, we crammed back into the green pickle and headed downhill. My sisters both fell asleep but I occupied myself with the yellow walk-man and learned all of the words to "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls." The very first song that I learned all of the words to was telling me as a six year old to not chase my dreams, but rather to stick to what was comfortable, because then I would never get hurt.

After sixteen years of not chasing my waterfalls, I have a new song stuck in my head: my own. In my song I am not sticking to the rivers and the lakes that I am used to and I recently mowed over that Yield sign.