“Where in the world do we start?” I’ve asked and been asked this question quite a few times in my life. Mostly in the context of group homework assignments or during giant house cleaning sessions. Nowhere near exciting. But almost a year and a half ago, my cousin and travel buddy Sammie asked me to go with her on her gap year between high school and college. My immediate response was obviously “YES ARE YOU KIDDING ME OF COURSE THANK YOU I CAN’T WAIT” (this is entirely not exaggerated, I’m 100% sure I said all of this in one long run-on sentence). From there, the coordination kicked into high gear, and we quite literally asked “Where in the world do we start?!” Well, we have since answered that question, and I’ll tell you where; we are starting in London, England. From there, we will visit another 9 countries as we travel the world, including spending significant time in Hungary and Australia, with our longest stay in New Zealand. But those will be stories for another time, we haven’t gotten to that step of the adventure yet! For now, I can only ask “where in the world should I start this blog post?” I think I’ll begin with the inspiration for my blog’s title. First, let me just say that I absolutely love the word adventure. Love, love, love it. It’s such a great word. Just saying it makes me feel up for anything. On top of that, I will fully admit to being super cliche when I say that I think life is an adventure. Or, more specifically, a series of adventures. Any and every situation or action can be called an adventure, from eating something you’ve never tried before to having to drive in San Francisco for the first time (shoutout to spring break 2k14 with the Macalester water polo team) to starting a new job to leaving the country for 7 months. Obviously, some adventures could be considered of a larger magnitude than others, but they are all very relevant and all still adventurous! Since this blog is documenting my travel and my new post-college life, it HAD to have adventure in the title.
The other part of my title stems from my collegiate studies. In May, I graduated from Macalester College with a degree in applied mathematics and statistics, where I learned about and worked with algorithms. In the fields of mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is essentially defined as a set of rules for solving a problem or accomplishing a goal; in other words, an algorithm is a step-by-step solution. That’s what this blog is, my set of “rules” that will lead step-by-step to an adventure. However, I take a very Pirates of the Caribbean stance on my rules: they are more of what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. Remember, there can be more than one algorithm to solve the same problem or, in this case, more than one way to reach adventure! This leads me to my first step - packing. I hate packing. Just ask any of my closest friends. I’m not very easily stressed, but I get overwhelmed when I pack. Too many choices. It’s exhausting. It’s the worst. And it doesn’t help that I had to pack for an entire spectrum of weather. My mom came to my rescue by going through each article of clothing with me; she’s taught me everything I know about packing. It helped me a ton, although I’m sure I was a tad inconvenient (love you, mom!). But even with her help, it’s still the worst. So, you can imagine that the answer to “where in the world do I start?” when discussing packing was a difficult one to reach. Now that I’m obviously so much more experienced in this area (ha good one), I can give a few hints on how to accomplish packing. It’s hard to pack a seven month trip into two bags and a small backpack! Hopefully it takes less time for the rest of the world than it took me...
I hope these tips could come in handy someday! Packing wasn’t easy, but I made it through. And if I can do it, you can too. I promise. Now, as I sit here in the Newark airport about to board my flight to London (with the outcome of my first adventure - aka packing - stowed in the cargo hold of the plane), I can’t believe that a plan of a year and a half is actually coming to fruition. My next adventure is just across the pond. See you in London!
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Meet AnyaHi, Hola, Bonjour, Ciao!
I’m Anya Phillips, a data analyst and travel enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the next adventure! Categories
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