So after a night of music, memories and stories, we let ourselves sleep in. Then I met up with Lia D'angelo's cousins, Mary and Murphy, who are travelling around the world. I met them both last summer during the D'angelo family vacation to Pinecrest, which is also where they hatched their master plan. We just happened to overlap in Athens and met for coffee. The stories they told, the changes they've made and the things they've seen were a complete inspiration to me. They literally booked 3 flights: San Francisco-New Zealand, Thailand-Greece and London-San Francisco. Unreal how cool that is. They both quit jobs, packed up and left. They are ultimately living the romantic dream I've always had--and teaching me how to do it.
As if that wasn't enough inspiration for that day, we met up with Chris, the guy who had travelled around India by himself for 3 months. We ended up talking for a few hours on the beach about the definition of education, what we are both going to do with our lives and what travel is. It was so cool to hear his stories and to get a totally fresh perspective on life. He didn't go to college, he moved to Oregon to be in a band, he was simply not satisfied with his life so he packed up and left to India. Wow. It was so neat, so out there and so what I want to do now.
As I killed a night in the airport later that day (my flight was at some ungodly hour like 4am), I became completely overwhelmed. I wanted to go to every country in the world, all at once. I did not want to go back to Bordeaux. A crazy little part of me wanted to walk out of the airport and hop onto Mary and Murphy's next leg: Istanbul. I wanted to pack up and leave. No thoughts, no regrets, no money.
It was the biggest moment of clarity I've ever had. I am going to travel when I graduate from college--and hopefully for an undetermined amount of time. I want to live that spontaneous life that I have always dreamed about but never knew if it would happen or not. I was overwhelmed, awestruck and scared. I was mad, sad, excited and nervous. In the slightly cheesy but totally appropriate words of Alanis Morissette: The moment I let go of it, was the moment I got more than I could handle. The moment I jumped off of it was the moment I touched down.
So basically, it comes down to this: I love hearing travel stories--and not just abroad stories (although those are pretty great as well), but real, roughing it, not Western-Europe stories. Tales of India, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand. I cannot wait to make some stories of my own. It is exactly how Adrianna put it--there is a flame in my eye now. I don't want to go home. I want to travel and see parts of Europe I said I wanted to visit--Istanbul, Lisbon and Budapest. I don't want to leave France without doing what I was going to do: become fluent, see the non-typical destinations, travel on a minimal budget. Live.
Maybe I will. No, scratch that. I WILL do this. I WILL experience what I set off to experience. I want to stay, I want to have wonder in my eyes always. I need it. There is so much world to see and I have seen the countries that are the most similar. I want to be in awe, I want to have my eyes opened by places in India where people are still burned to clean their souls, where you take 48 hour train rides and find comradery with people who don't speak the same languages, where 7 year old Cambodian girls tell you off in minimal English. Where right is not right and left is not left; where whosits and whatsits live together. Where awe and bewilderment are comment. Where life truly exists. Take me there.
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