Evolution of Reasons to Travel Part 1

When you close your eyes and visualize your dream vacation, what do you see? Many of us want to see the sights, ride a double decker bus in London, gape in awe at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Italy, dip our toes into the blue, refreshing waters of the Caribbean, or climb the stairs to the top of the Statue of Liberty to observe the New York skyline while anticipating our next step to Time Square, Central Park, or to simply stuff our faces with a mouthful of delicious pizza. The list goes on and for most of us we have that one destination that immediately causes us to become giddy and chatty once brought up in conversation.

For years that place for me has been Costa Rica, but the reasons captivating me to go there have gradually evolved. Not only have my previous travels made me yearn for Costa Rica more and more, but a new destination has squeezed it’s way into the top ranking. Now, the important questions. Why Costa Rica? What reasons have grown? And what is this new mystery place?!

Please have patience while we travel back in time to my childhood and some menial details that may not make sense right away. 🙂 Is your coffee ready?

Rewinding back to about 12 year old me. At this point in time I was that ‘perfect child’ if those exist. My report cards were always filled with A after A without any prodding from my mom to complete my homework, I was a competitive swimmer whose worst nightmare was to miss a practice, and I decided boys were going to be deemed ‘icky’ for a few more years. Can you blame me? Boys have cooties, we all know that.

Now if you were to ask about 12 year old me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I wasn’t sure how to answer. To be honest, current 25 year old me still can’t give you an answer I’m 100% satisfied with. However, 12 year old me and 25 year old me have stuck together strong on two things: 1) I want to help people and 2) I want to travel. The history behind helping people can be saved for later, but now we will analyze that little travel bug.

Touching briefly on the swimming topic, I was a competitive swimmer from the time I was 8 until I was 22 and my eligibility to swim at the university level was maxed out. I sometimes find myself nostalgic about my swimming days and traveling with the team. On my club team, before college, we would go on weekend trips to California from Reno and they were amazing! We were together with all our friends taking over the hotel pool to play a massive game of Marco Polo or show off how fast we were at swimming to the other kids, we had the opportunity to eat at new restaurants, watch better TV channels than we had back home, and when we were younger (before we understood the proper definition of tired) we would play a huge game of hide n’ seek. The latter was highly looked down upon by our coach, but when hide n’ seek with up to 20 swimmers is calling your name you simply must comply and play! Now these short travels from Reno to California were filled with new experiences (no matter how small) and always associated with memorable events. In turn, these weekend competitions planted that original seed that grew and blossomed into what has now become a strong redwood that has no chance of falling down. I like to call this Redwood Wanderlust.

We’ll skip ahead to senior year of high school. We’ll start off by playing a little trivia game. What stressful, possible tear jerking, and very exciting event takes place with just about every 18 year old in their final year of high school?

A) whether to find a date or go with a group of friends to prom

B) deciding on/being accepted to their dream university

C) deciding which color t-shirt best brings out their eyes.

If you guessed C) you answered correctly!!!! Wait, that can’t be right…. Oh sorry, wrong question, If you guessed B) you answered correctly!

Now, back to the story. When I had finally narrowed down which two universities I was between I had the following two options, let’s see if you can figure out which one I chose.

Option 1: university near home; would not need to live in a dorm room; would barely have to pay anything to attend; I would have a swim coach I trusted and have actually been coached by since I was 11; I would be with all of my friends and reunited with some on the swim team

Option 2: university across the country; would not be able to come home often; extremely expensive; rained and snowed constantly (keep in mind I am from the dessert and love it); I didn’t know a single person

Considering this is a blog about travel and my aim is to encourage traveling I hope everyone went with Option 2, the obvious option right? Yeah, not so much.

In the end, I wanted to see something new. I wanted to meet new people, swim in competitions that would bring me to states I had not yet set foot on, and (being a history nerd) visit some of those interesting sights derived from one the United State’s 13 original colonies.

*Side note: I cannot say how often this little tune got stuck in my head freshmen year, “Fifty nifty United States from 13 original colonies. Shout em’, scout em’, tell all about em’…” You’re welcome for reminding you of that little jingle. Now, moving on.

I could easily write an entire separate blog about experiences and lessons learned while in college so I will do my best to keep to the details that made the Redwood called Wanderlust grow strong and wind me up somewhere that is not Costa Rica.

First, I cannot tell you enough about the amazing people I encountered, but as promised I will keep this short. After freshmen year, my roommate (a dear, lifelong friend who I will cherish for life), a few other people, and myself had a conversation that led to the phrase, “Imagine if we never met.” What if we never met? I know if I stayed home I would have been introduced to some amazing people, but to imagine my life without ever meeting my roommate (who I proposed to after my first year of college just to let you know; and for the record she said yes! Yes, to being my roommate again the following year. Dang I was a lucky girl :P) and other close friends that I know I’ll have for life was unimaginable.

Next we’ll talk about what happens when you befriend internationals. Two of my absolute closest friends from college are from Scotland and Sweden. I learned so much from them during my 4 years there. I knew that at the time, but I never realized quite how much of an impact they had on my life until later on. They would challenge me to think differently, tell stories of how life was back home for them, and I would of course laugh at my Scottish friend for saying strange things such as actually pronouncing the t’s as t’s in the word matter. I think we all know that they are actually supposed to sounds like d’s. Aren’t I right? Back me up everyone!

My friend from Sweden would challenge me in many different ways. If she was curious about how things were here and we would explain them she would ask the following compelling question, “Why?” Of course we all question things, but to see through the eyes and perspective of  someone who is not from your native country truly makes you think and realize, “Hey, maybe we’re wrong,” or, “Nope. We definitely have the best solution for that. Other countries are weird.”

One specific exchange we still laugh about is when I talked to this same friend about how in the first 2 weeks of school it probably rained enough fill the whole state of Nevada’s quota of rain for a year (I was only slightly exaggerating). She responded with her eyes nearly bugging out of her head and exclaiming, “What?! It barley rains here! In Sweden I can count the amount of sunny days and we have special pots that drain our plants so they don’t drown from all the rain.” Ummmmm, Sweden is a strange place! Who would ever willingly live in an environment that rained that much? Maybe if one was born and raised there I could see it, but as for me, I was heading straight back to the desert when I was done with my 4 years since Pennsylvania weather was almost too overwhelming for me.

But now here I am in my bed starting a blog about traveling and living abroad. Not in a tropical paradise where everyone speaks Spanish and everything is cheap. No, I am in a place where it’s dark, cold, rains even more than Pennsylvania, I’m even further away from my family, the people here laugh at how Americans complain about ‘high gas prices and taxes’, and they speak a language that only their country speaks. I am in Gothenburg, Sweden. I am happy, I am learning, and I am looking forward to learning much more.

We’ll get into more details about Costa Rica and more reasons to travel soon. For now we know that when you travel you can have fun, you can take another picture for your scrapbook or social media page, and you can have outstanding memories. But now I hope it is clear that you can meet new and interesting people. You don’t just learn from them, but you can become great friends with them. Who knows? They might even land you a job in a different country.

So why travel? We have only scratched the surface.