The 10 Years Ago Me

Our flights are booked. Wow. We decided to risk the change fee and go ahead and confirm our flights. For some reason the final week in July is pretty booked so we were nervous if we waited until the 15th we could get stuck with a pretty awful schedule. We are flying Lufthansa. If anyone else has traveled Lufthansa I would love to know how it went. Scratch that. Only tell me if you had a good experience because my nerves are already sky high so it is probably best I am just blissfully unaware. We also have our required humanitarian aid purchased and we just need to put it all in suitcases. I went to Target yesterday and raided the clearance rack for clothes. I had a blast. I tried to buy lots of different sizes and kept thinking that a family on the waitlist could get their referral and the child would be wearing something that I purchased. I was holding back the tears in Target. I couldn't resist and did buy an Ohio State t-shirt. Hopefully a die hard Michigan family won't receive a referral picture with their kid in a t-shirt stating that they are a future Buckeye. (I secretly hope they do.)

As Damon and I were emailing back and forth with the travel agent this weekend, I started to think back to the last time I traveled outside the US and realized that it has been 10 years. Too long! Actually, it was EXACTLY 10 years ago that my friend, Liz, and I backpacked around Europe for a little over a month. I had spent the previous year teaching English in Japan and had saved the money for this trip. As it turned out Liz was one of the hostesses for my shower a few weeks ago. Damon and I have traveled a lot here in the States but haven't been overseas together as a married couple. I have to say that looking over flight schedules did make me nervous about navigating the long flight and layovers, packing all the essentials, wondering where we will stay, etc. So I decided it was time for some positive self talk. I reminded myself that I am fairly well traveled and that I DO enjoy exploring new places. Obviously there is a lot at stake with this trip that I haven't experienced in the past and I have never been to Africa but this won't be my first trip overseas.

I pulled out my photo album from my Europe trip and took a therapeutic walk down memory lane. It really did help to look at those pictures and remind myself that there is an adventurous person inside of me. I laughed at our lack of a plan. We knew the places we wanted to go but just took each location day by day and when we felt it was time to move on we did. Many times our lack of planning resulted in some "don't tell mom" moments. On one of those occasions we arrived in Heidelberg, Germany really late at night and all the hostels we called were booked. We contemplated sleeping in the train station! Eventually we decided to splurge and stay at the nice hotel near the station instead. We ended up doing the same thing a week or so later in Prague. Not smart. Liz and I split ways after spending a few days in Austria and she went to Italy and I went to Paris a few days before my flight home. I spent three days in Paris by myself. Where is that Emily of 10 years ago? I still can't believe I did that. I had some extra money that I had set aside so I stayed at a small but nice hotel near the Arc de Triumphe. You could actually see it from my hotel balcony. One of the days I made friends with three older American ladies and they doted on me for an afternoon. I am going to add working on channeling that braver, more adventurous version of myself to my to-do list.

I scanned in some of my favorite photos of the trip.

Stonehenge - 2000

Baby Shower - 2010

Have we changed much? Please don't answer that question.