the blog begins!

20days 6hours and 9minutes

left until I leave as I start writing this post. Welcome to my first travel-blog post! PLEASE feel free to leave comments and let me know who you are and your reactions to my adventures, which will hopefully be numerous!

For those of you who might not be so filled in on what my plans for this summer are, I'll recount them briefly here. I'm leaving May 26th for Europe and I'm flying into Berlin, Germany via a one hour layover in Madrid, Spain. I get into Berlin around noon on the 27th (due to flight time and time changes) and I will be leaving that evening for Amsterdam, which is in the Netherlands. I'll spend three days there, then fly to London where I will be spending another 3 days there. Then I will take the Chunnel to Paris, spend 2 days and then it's back to Berlin! I'll be spending a night in a hostel there and then on June 6th I will be going to the IES headquarters in Berlin and beginning my study abroad program and will live in Berlin for the next month and a half with a host family and study at Humboldt University!

I'm so excited and more than a little nervous. I'm going on this entire trip by myself; I don't know a soul in any of the cities I will be visiting. Oddly enough a group of 4 guys, some of them good friends of mine will be tromping through Europe at about the same time, but our itinerary's don't coincide anywhere. Traveling alone is going to have some pluses and minuses, as it is with anything else. I have to do a lot more planning and research about where I'm going and staying and how safe those locations are, and I also have only myself to blame if I screw up. On the flip side, going alone means you have no limitations. You get to do what you want when you want, and you don't have to balance your interests and preferences with anyone else's. It also is going to give me a strong feeling of strength and empowerment knowing that I planned this all myself, and now it's actually happening. I'm sure it will be lonely at times, but even more I know it will be a blast.

So, welcome to the adventure, I guess! Or perhaps better put, welcome to my wanderings.