"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."
- Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
A depressing thought, but something that struck me in a "turn the telescope around and see why we're here" kind of way. As I thought about this quote more and more, I came to terms with the idea that there is a whole lot that I'm not going to get to see and experience and I have to be OK with that. There are so many things on my checklist for life that I probably won't do, but I am confident that my upcoming trip will definitely take a few of those things off of my list and into a scrapbook. This quote has inspired me to seize the opportunity to live as much as possible with the mist of a life I have, and I am so lucky to get the chance to see all of the things I am going to see over the course of these next 4 months. In my short 15 years of living I haven't gotten the chance to travel much, but I am so excited to leave my comfort zone and live differently than I ever have and be completely out of my element. I hope that travel will allow me to broaden my ideas about things and help me to develop a stronger sense of what I want to do with the rest of my life.
The idea of living as much as I can definitely inspired the semi-cheesy title for this blog... Also, it's a Kanye lyric. Ha!
That's why I am beyond excited to leave (only 5 more sleeps!) for New York, Europe and South Africa to live in the world in a way I might never experience again. My family and I are so blessed to get the chance to do something amazing like this on my Dad's sabbatical, and I'm so excited to see all the amazing things we are going to learn as a family from this adventure.
We have so many amazing things planned like traipsing around Central Park, a week in Paris, an Arcade Fire concert, me and my gramma cruising the Mediterranean (I can't even begin to explain how crazy that is going to be), helping out at the Seed of Hope in Bhekulwandle, and a Safari which I am naturally stoked out of my mind for! I'm also just excited to write about these adventures and share them with a little bit of an audience, as I hope to someday get paid to write. I hope that you enjoy reading about our wild adventures overseas through me, and I encourage you to check out the rest of my family's blog at www.schwartz5onsabbatical.blogspot.com
The trip is going to be sweet, no question. But we're going to miss you guys. :)
ReplyDeleteAlright, time to begin reviewing this travel blog. And I'm a very tough critic (not really. I just like to say that.).
ReplyDeleteLet me just say that this is a great first entry. It sets the whole thing up, gives a bit of a tease of what's to come when this trip actually begins and provides some interesting insight into the central character of this blog's motivation going into this trip. And by central character, I mean Alanna. So this entry is getting a solid 8/10, and I have a feeling that most of your entries will be getting that grade or higher. Unless I'm setting myself up for disappointment, but I doubt that.