What is a Journey?

A journey is not a trip.

It's not a vacation.

It's a process. A discovery.

It's a process of self discovery

A journey brings us face to face with ourselves.

A journey shows us not only the world, 

but how we fit in it.

Does the person create the journey

or does the journey create the person?

The journey is life itself.

Where will life take you?

             I've decided to share a quote that I encountered in the McDonald's in the Madrid airport after a week long trip to Switzerland in my friends' journal. Looking back, this quote really reflects for me these two semesters and especially this current one. This has been a journey that did not just start when my flight landed in Madrid, Spain about 8 months ago. This journey began long before that when my parents were wonderful enough to start letting me travel. First, to overnight camp, then to South Dakota and New Orleans with my church. Then the big step of coming to Spain for the first time 5 years ago and falling in love the country of Spain. This journey that I'm on continues after that first trip to Spain with realizing that I wanted to continue learning Spanish. I was then set on studying abroad for one semester while minoring in Spanish. As the journey continued, plans evolved and then I became a Spanish major going to Spain for an academic year to study. Now it continues its' evolution. Although I am leaving this city and country, those which I have fallen deep in love with, in a mere 10 days, I get the chance to go back home and live my life there with everything that I have learned here. Then I will hopefully return in year for yet another year or two living and working here as a teacher. Freshman year I remember trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life and study at Pitt. I was a Spanish major but hadn't yet picked up my business major. I was talking with my wonderful father and he told me something along the lines of, "Knowing what you don't want to do in life is just as important, if not more so, than knowing what you want to do in life". I then thought to myself, "Well, I know I don't want to be a doctor and I don't want to be a teacher."  Looking back, I can't help but laugh because as I said that, my past actions did not quite agree with the not-wanting-to-be-a-teacher part. I had already desired to be a camp counselor, I taught a class for Vacation Bible School at my church, and I love children dearly. It only took my coming to Spain and volunteering at a school here and teaching did I realized that I quite like teaching. Who knows if I will end up being a full-time teacher further down the road but right now, I know that I love teaching children. I also know that I can come back to Spain doing just that and I am over the moon excited that I have that opportunity to further explore this section of my life. I guess this is just a little rambling (and procrastinating since my exams start on Monday and I need to study) but I just want to put it out there that Never say never. Never in a million years, if you asked me while I was in my freshman year Spanish class, counting down the time until 1:23pm when we were released from what I considered my own personal prison, that if 7 years from now, I would be working my way up to fluency in Spanish, I would have just lived a year in Spain, and then I would have plans to come back for another 2 years to teach? I would have thought you went off the deep end and then I would have walked away to go to my study hall because I wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time than was necessary in that classroom. And look at where I am now. 




         Even though it's a very bittersweet feeling to leave here in 10 days and I know that many tears are to be shed, I cannot wait to see what my journey has in store for me this next year of my life. 










Never say never.

Besos y abrazos

xoxo