And So It Begins...

I woke up around 8am, having only gone to bed two hours earlier. Yet with only a couple hours of sleep in me, I still did not feel tired. I was like a little kid waking up on Christmas morning- the excitement was enough to wake me up instantly!

Before leaving for the airport.

In only a few hours I would be saying goodbye to my routine life in Boston and heading out for an eight-week adventure in Europe. So imagine my disappointment when I threw open my window curtains to greet the morning, but was instead also forced to greet the rain that had come in overnight! Of course the day I have to move all my boxes to storage is when it decides to rain (and after a previous week of beautiful weather). Therefore, the morning was a mildly stressful one with my friend, Chante, and I throwing garbage bags over all my boxes so they wouldn’t get soaked in the bed of the pickup truck we had rented.
But I did not lose hope! My adventure was still getting ready to take place-- I just had to jump through a couple of hoops before I could get there. All in all, moving all my things to storage only took a little over two hours and was relatively painless – take that, Rain! You tried to foil my plans but I have proved superior!

Before I left for the airport I ran into two of my good friends and was glad I was able to say goodbye. One of them, Kristen, will be attending Trinity University in Ireland in the fall for her PhD. so she may take a week to come visit this summer, which would be tons of fun! It wasn’t until I said goodbye to my friends and walked into my newly emptied apartment that it really hit me… Starting a new adventure is great, but it also means saying goodbye to the people and places that have been my home for the past school year. The only thing that comforts me is knowing this it is not a permanent goodbye. Yet before I even left Boston, I already felt homesick for it, however I was comforted to know I would only be gone a short three months.

But still as the cab pulled away from my apartment building I felt the urge to scream to the cab driver, “Wait! Slow down- you’re driving too fast and I need more time to say goodbye!” I know that I’ll be back in three months, but I also know that I will be coming back to a completely new environment in the fall. I will no longer live in South Campus, many of my friends will be spread out across the globe at new universities, and I have yet to find an apartment for September.

When I was in the sixth grade I went on a weekend school trip to Camp Maclean. When I returned, just a mere three days after having left, I found that the 7-11 that once stood behind my house was gone. It’s windows were boarded up, its sign taken down, a small piece of my childhood lost. This was just one of the instances where life took me by the shoulders and shook me hard saying, “See! Things change, nothing is forever.” And so I left Boston this morning with a sort of sweet sadness- knowing the adventure waiting for me on the other end was well worth whatever I may have to say goodbye to at my university home, but missing it all the same… It’s the same feeling I get every time I must leave my real, true home in Chicago.

I arrived at the airport and found three other girls that were also part of the Boston University trip. We sat together and talked before boarding the plane and it was comforting to know that when the plane’s tires hit the tarmac 3000 miles away, over 6 hours later, I already had new friends to join me in my adventure.

As the plane pulled away from the gate at Logan International Airport and it’s tires lifted from the runaway to glide through the sky, I said goodbye to Boston once more and I said hello to the possibilities I had waiting for me on the other end of my flight. As my dad told me before the plane took off: This is a once in a lifetime experience- enjoy it.” And I can’t wait!

written by

kmr788 on May 27, 2009 from Boston, United States

from the travel blog: Dublin, Ireland

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