Prelude to the Adventure of a Lifetime…

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Athens, Greece

Prelude to the Adventure of a Lifetime…

Sunday 10 January 2016

In one of the sixth grade classes I’ve been working with the past couple months, we did a Travel Journal project together.  The students picked a dream destination they’d like to visit, did the research, and then wrote about it as if they and a few of their friends actually traveled there together.  The projects came together really well and the kids were just as excited about it as their core teacher and I (if that’s possible J). 

A couple months ago, a friend/fellow teaching fellow began dreaming of and planning a travel adventure of our own.  We looked at maps and blogs and train tables and marveled at all the places we could go—places we had only ever dreamed of going, let alone going to altogether in one giant trip!  Slowly, we the pieces and details of our trip came together and we made the final preparations as our anticipation grew and departure date moved ever closer.

21 days                      20 nights                    6 countries                             10 cities

Budapest ~ Vienna ~ Salzburg ~ Munich ~ Nuremberg ~

Berlin ~ Amsterdam ~ Dublin ~ Bruges ~ Brussels

But all of our plans and dreams could never prepare us for how truly and incredibly and amazingly awesome this adventure would be.  The trip of a lifetime.

We flew home yesterday, and now, as I sit here on this rainy day in Athens, back in my own bed (which has more than one measly excuse of a pillow and a blanket that actually stretches to cover the bed and my toes sufficiently!), with clothes that are truly clean and not wrinkled beyond belief from being rolled and crammed haphazardly but strategically into a backpack that seems like it should be bigger for how heavy it is… Now that we are back, I can savor the bittersweetness of journeys that are ending and homecomings that are signaling new beginnings. 

I look back on the last unbelievably incredible three weeks and almost don’t know where to begin with processing it all.

I went into our trip inspired by my sixth graders to take their/our learning into the world and apply it for real, and so I set out to capture as much of our adventures as I could in my own travel journal of sorts.  In quiet moments sipping coffee at a small café, or to the gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) swaying of the train breezing by countrysides that would change each time we traveled somewhere new, or even sometimes (who are we kidding, often) in those last few minutes of the day fighting back the tiredness that tugged at my eyes and limbs, I would pull out my phone or my journal (usually my phone for convenience’s sake) and I would try to write about that day—try to capture as many pieces of the adventure and just get it down.

And now begins the real task of trying to piece all of those entries together with the dozens and dozens of pictures I snapped (just point and shoot as we walk by this monument and that mountain…).  Another adventure all it’s own. 

But, σιγά σιγά, slowly slowly, we’ll piece it back together. 

And so now, I invite you to join me as we embark again on this crazy-adventure of a lifetime.  Christmas Euro Trip 2.0: Travel Journal/Blog Edition.  It’ll give me the chance to process and relive (and remember) all that we did and it’ll give you a chance to share in the journey if you’d like.  (and it will also—hopefully!—keep me accountable and on time for sorting through and posting these entries/pictures…fingers crossed on that one…).

So here we go.  Adventure awaits…