Camping Trip

I've been really nervous for the past few weeks. I'm not going to lie, I've been in kind of a funk. I just wanted to skip over the next five weeks and get back home to Jersey. I wasn't sad about missing this place because I'll be back next fall.

And then, my long dreaded camping trip came up.

I'm not sure why I wasn't excited. I haven't camped all that much in the past few years, but I've never had any bad experiences. I'm not sure why I was so reluctant to rent my gear, pack my bag and go.

This weekend was one of my favorite weekends I've had here so far (again, one of). I met some new people. I laughed with the people I knew. I played around with my professor's dog he brought along. I slept. I slept. I slept. I ate trail mix (with extra m&ms). I sat by the river. I looked up at the stars with my friend after we ended up walking by a growling tent as our flashlight gave out. I remembered how different sides of people can come out when they're crowded around a fire on a cold night. I looked out into the mountains that looked like green waves crashing everywhere you looked. I ran through the woods (downhill), something I forgot how much I missed. I sat under a tree and journaled and sketched the bridge that brought us back to the cars. I thought about how one year ago today I was drinking a cappuccino with a friend with the Duomo in the background and now I'm in the Ventana Wilderness in California's Carmel Valley completely content (aside from the streams of sweat pouring down my face...). I thought about how much I've seen in the past two years, grateful and lucky that I have these opportunities and that I was born and raised with drive and motivation to work and go out and see these things.

It was sad coming back to campus, but I got my clothes de-posion-oaked, my hair is soft again, my skin cleaned, my leg shaved. I realized that as long as you take one tiny thing from a trip, the smallest of things along with you, the trip was worth it. Going on a trip, enjoying yourself, then going back to the exact life you had before seems pointless. Why not just lay on the couch if you just needed a break? I for sure adapted Italian aspects of life into my everyday, and I've definitely changed since I've been here. Who knows? Maybe I would have changed in this way if I was home, but I think the atmosphere and environment played a role too.

I decided to make one pretty drastic change for the next few months and not use my cell phone on Mondays. For everyone else, that must seem impossible, but it isn't that hard for me since I don't have class now or over the summer on Mondays. I'll still use my laptop for school and work, but to put my phone away for a whole day will be a nice change I think.

I've just taken the journal entries I wrote from in the tent and from under the tree and just added them to my little leather-bound journal. I have to say, I haven't documented this trip as well as my last, but I also am not visiting exotic cities every weekend. I am adding pictures to Facebook and journaling more than I have been editing photos and blogging.

For those of you who don't know, on my first trip abroad, I bought a leather-bound notebook. I was journaling about that trip in my travel journal, something my mother gave to me when I was little that has Mickey Mouse stickers in it and scribbles how John wouldn't keep fighting with me on that long drive up to Maine. Anyway, I bought journal and wrote in the front my favorite things of the moment and then wrote out "this will be the journal I use on my big trip to Italy." I didn't know at the time I would be studying abroad since I was only 16 at the time. I figured it would be something I found decades from now and laughed at. Not only did I use the notebook, I realized I bought it in Florence of all places. Since I returned, I thought it would be nice to keep the tradition. Now, every time I go to a place, I use the journal I bought from the last place. Before I return home, I buy a journal made in the area that I was in and write in the front my favorite things and save it for my next big trip. It has been difficult to track down a journal or notebook that is made in California, but I am determined. Plus, I have all next semester. For now, I'll just enjoy where I'm at and leave the worrying for tomorrow.

Before and after:

A friend and I thinking "what did we get ourselves into?"

This isn't too bad after all :)

OH, and this is totally lame, but I'm happy I saved the last 50 pages of the last Hunger Games book to read when I got back from being in the woods for a few days, not like the experience is all that similar, just thought it was funny.