Making the decision to go abroad can be intimidating, exhilarating, anxiety inducing, inspiring and terrifying all at once. Whether it be for a semester, a year, 6 months, or even just a few weeks, for a lot of people (myself included) it takes a serious push from within to actually make the leap. Everyone talks about wanting to explore the world, but realistically only a special minority of us actually have the balls to go out and do it in a real way. In times of doubt, these quotes assured me that moving back to Europe was the best decision I could have ever made.
“If you’re 22, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel- as far and widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them- wherever you go.”-Anthony Bourdain
“Travel keeps you young. It does this by simply putting you in situations that make you feel like a child again. Magically lost in a moment of discovery. Beautifully confused. If could be the first time you awaken to the 5:00am call to prayer from the local mosque on Morocco’s far Atlantic shore, the first time you feel the weight of the Egyptian sun on your shoulder’s, the first time you paddle out over the shallow reefs of the Caribbean, or the first time you realize that people living in squalor can achieve happiness as easily as those living in mansions.These are life’s opportunities to shed the hustle of modernity, to join the moment, and stop sprinting toward some prefabricated goal. Your heart races. Your metabolism shifts into a lower gear. Everything is new again. You’re Sipping Jetstreams.”
“Twenty years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones that you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
“It is in all of us to defy expectations to go into the world and to be brave; and to want, to need, to hunger for adventures; to embrace change and chance and risk so that we may breathe and know what it is to be free.”
“There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.” – Judith McNaught
