Adventure.

I remember feeling my life ambitions pulsing out of my fingertips. Images and words colliding to create an unknown that would and will always fascinate me like nothing else I have experienced. I remember writing being as necessary as air. Perhaps these memoirs are a tribute to the adventure that I experienced abroad, or maybe I will someday learn that they are simply memoirs of what it is like to be young and free of a particular direction. Writing about them is a way of bringing the sensations back to me. I am sitting in a coffee shop and my heart is pouring out onto the table, onto the floor around me, and onto the page in front of me.

As I traveled through Europe I lived off of my emotions. They fed me each day with new experience and gave me an appetite for a greater sense of awe. I was in awe of the sunrise, the sunset, the mist over the oceans, the mystery of the ancient buildings, and the adventure that I awoke to each morning. Adventure had become a dear friend, and together we ran, jumped, and flew our way around the towns, streets, and coastlines of Europe.

The excitement was tangible; it lined the hills of Albania, it brought every possibility front and center. I walked along castle walls. I climbed down rocky cliffs on the banks of Lake Ohrid in Macedonia. I got lost and was found by a group of beautiful Aussie boys. I watched poetic sunsets in Croatia from the back patio of our hilltop home stay. I remember thinking that the old man upstairs was never satisfied- he didn’t seem to realize that he lived inside of perfection. His world was filled with blue waters and ancient beach towns that were kissed each day by blue skies and endless possibility. For a few days I lingered in this world and laughed at his under appreciation for the good life; I can rightly assume that perhaps I am guilty of the same lack of appreciation for my own home.

I took regular risks and basked in the chaotic thrill that accompanied them. I drove mopeds across Tuscany and got lost on roads that seemed not to exist in the fields they carved through. I jumped off of cliffs and floated on my back in the Adriatic Sea, and stared at the sky. I thought it deliciously odd that the skies in Europe looked almost identical to the skies at home. I danced with the fishermen on the island of Capri, where the boats and the beach were lined with magic and lights and music. I thought that it couldn’t be real, and then touched the sand, and realized that it was. It was all, real.

I day dreamed about the people at home and wondered if they would ever understand what I was seeing, the air I was breathing, and the sounds that I was growing accustomed to. They will never know these things as I have known them. Just as they will never know my life as I live it. I am an observer. The things I saw will be written about and thought of for the duration of my life, but can only be seen in their full capacity within the confines of my mind. Soft and sweet are these memories, so dear to my core.

I remember having Italian class with Professoressa Baldini, and Professoressa Ruso in Florence; those women gave me a new sense for language. In between class I would watch Jesus parade around the pensione in his sandals and oversized shirts while he cleaned and bitched about our poor drinking health. I remember the look of my bed by the window, and how the sound of sirens would overtake my sleep. Dreams and reality blended together so often that I felt crazy.

When I journeyed to Tunisia in northern Africa, I ran up the mountains that burst out of the earth at the edge of the Sahara. I sat atop a sand dune one night a few days before Christmas and contemplated the placement of the stars and myself beneath them. I could not comprehend how miraculously and completely the Universe fit together. I rode camels into the horizon and saw nothing but sand in every direction. The world around me was desolate and mysterious, and it thrilled me.

Moments like these came together and built a year of my life. I rode with them, I walked with them, I wrote about them. The construction of time and the way that I remember it is of the same architectural majesty as the cathedrals that I wandered among. My 20th year of life was sculpted by Renaissance storms, and smoothed by floods of gelato. I look forward to returning someday.


I awoke one spring morning in an apartment in Rome. It was 5:30am and the birds were singing the day to rise just outside my window. As I opened my eyes I felt it all come to an end, a gentle close to a long and unforgettable story. It was time to go home. Those beautiful European bird songs would be left behind in a matter of hours. I would be air borne and on my way back home again. I can’t help but to wonder how much of me is left behind in those streets, or how much of my thoughts are lost in translation by the romance of the language. I suppose if I ever return, I will know just how much of me still lives in another part of the world.