This all began over a year ago on a long drive home from school. My friend Hannah and I were having one of those ?deep? conversations about life and the meaning of it all. Somewhere in the conversation the topic of travel came up and we both talked about how much we wanted to travel and about how we would love to go to Europe. We sat there dreaming for awhile then the thought came to me, ?why don?t we go?? Why spend you life dreaming about what you want to do, why not just do it? We decided that next summer, the summer after our high school graduation, we would go. Our trip took many different forms, first as a study abroad, then as a guided tour, and then finally we decided we could do it on our own, we were going to backpack through Europe. Armed with our passports, some guidebooks and an ATM card linked to our bank accounts, we were going to set out on the adventure of a lifetime.

This brings me to now; I?m sitting on an airplane wondering what the hell I was thinking. I?ve spent the past year being excited about going on this trip that I forgot how scared I would be. It petrifies me to think that in a matter of hours I will be navigating my way through one of the largest cities in the world, London. It is even more petrifying because for the first day and a half I will be all by myself. Hannah has spent the past month in Germany on an exchange program and we will be meeting on Saturday. For a girl from a tiny rural American town who has never ridden public transportation before, getting my way around one of the largest cities in the world is very intimidating. But that is exactly why I came on this trip. I want to learn and experience new things away from the comfort and protection of home. It all seems so unbelievable that soon the plane will be landing, it?s as if I have jumped on an rollercoaster and the rollercoaster is teetering on the edge of a steep hill. I know I am about to go on the ride of my life.