Nine years ago I was living in Florence, Italy for a semester of study abroad and I got this idea in my mind that I wasn’t going to go home.
I had decided it was time for my next adventure, I could feel the excitement in my bones. I remember sitting in my apartment and reading books written by world travelers telling their stories about how travel had impacted and changed their life and their view on the world. I craved that more than anything.
I thought to myself, that's who I want to be, I want to have those experiences, put myself out there, bring myself to my knees and surrender to life.
During this time I made a profile on Au Pair World and I started talking to families. I was looking for families mainly in Spain because at the time I thought I needed to live in another country. I've lived in Italy, but now I need to live somewhere else, check another box on my list.
I was also open to the idea of Sicily and Greece because living on an island was also on my bucket list. I talked to many families and I had so many opportunities in front of me. I will never forget I was in Barcelona on a bus trip called bus to Alps which was a tour company that brought young aspiring travelers around Western Europe.
They prey on, or provide a service for study abroad students to experience Europe, by bus surrounded by a group of your peers with just about the same mindset, age, and worldview.
I cringe now when I think about it, it was some of my first travel experiences and I am happy that I had those experiences to see how I don't want to travel. They helped me discover that I would much rather find myself alone, lost, in a small city talking to a stranger in a coffee shop all afternoon than surrounded by a group of Amerians in Paris, desperately in search of Chipotle because they hadn’t had it in three months since they left home for their 6 month stint “living in Europe”.
Because we were trying to see as much as possible these young naïve students myself included signed up to get on the bus and travel to as many cities as possible in the 10-12 day break that we had we got on the bus and night bus the first travel to Berlin, then Paris, Brussels, for a few hours, Amsterdam, and Barcelona. I have a headache just thinking about visiting all of these places in such a short time. Just last week I went to Montenegro for 7 days and I hardly felt like it was enough time. It's a tiny country and it was my second visit there.
You can imagine how the bus journey was. I found myself exhausted, annoyed and at one point we stopped at a rest stop on the side of the road and my feet had swelled up so much that my black leather booties would not even fit on my feet!!
After all of that drinking and partying and all of these different cities around the world I ended up in Barcelona and we were out. I want to be in the most famous clubs in Barcelona and I just got up and went “home” to the hostel. I had had enough and my body was not happy with me. I got sick and spent the night and the next in the hostel. Just completely worn out.
During that time I spent agony in the hostel in Barcelona. I was on my phone searching through emails and messaging with Tiziana, I had a feeling that this might be the family. I remember that 8 person hostel room and the bottom bunk I was lying in so vividly. I made a choice at that moment to go and live in Sicily with a family I had sent dew emails with.
I called my parents and told them “ I’m not coming home” They were on board because I had a plan. The next thing I can recall is I was sitting in a café in Minori Italy where my great Grandfather was born, talking with my parents about the flight RyanAir was purchasing to go from Florence to Palermo. We sat outside at a cafe enjoying some coffee looking at the view of the Mediterranean sea as I planned an adventure that changed my life and brought me a second family.
Yesterday Tiziana messaged me saying she has some guests at her Bed and Breakfast from Minnesota, the memories flooded in of my first visit and all the other times I have called Sicily home and what a unique and beautiful experience I called into my life. I said yes to every opportunity, I put myself out of my comfort zone and embraced the moment and it led me to dinners at a table full of 30 Italians, sail boat rides to islands, afternoons at Nona’s, and evenings partying in Castles.
That brave girl with a plan and had a dream created an experience beyond her expectations and was open to accept every last bit of it. I'm not always that girl, I don't always see life the way she did. The world was her oyster; she believed she could do just about anything and she was right. This is my reminder to be more like her. Open and approaching life as a grand adventure.
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