USA

It's almost hit me - I am on the other side of the Atlantic, staying with people I can't quite understand, and I won't be home for another four months. How exciting!!
I'm now on the 4th day of my journey, in a suburb of Glasgow with some relatives of Ruaridh. It's really amazing to see this pretty suburb at the foot of these vast, rolling hills dotted with sheep. But before I get ahead of myself, let me start at the beginning... the abridged beginning.
Last year I was a freshman at UMass Amherst. At some point I realized I was wasting my time, and laying in my dorm room, decided with Ruaridh to do exactly what we would want if we could do anything in the world - travel. I transferred to a community college back in New Jersey, and started working full time at a restaurant to pay for the adventure. This is the basic rough plan: Start in Scotland while it's warmest. Then Dublin, England, Amsterdam, Germany, Prague, more Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and lastly, Portugal.
Several months later, the planning is over and the summer is coming to a close. This is when I begin to really freak out. The long, drawn out goodbyes to really close friends took an emotional toll. I would like to say I was on an emotional roller-coaster, but bumper cars would be more accurate - I crashed a lot. Example: I took out my backpack- the one I would spend the next semester living out of- and was so excited about the things I'd see with it - the London Eye, the Eiffel Tower, the Swiss Alps - and, playing with all the little compartments and zippers, decided to give it a test pack. At first, I could hardly fit an outfit and my sleeping bag, so I burst into tears. Then I took a nap. It was pretty bad. It always feels so weird when you're about to leave home for a while- trying to take in every little stimulus, you start to look at your room, your house, and your life in a totally different light.