As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!
Speaking of Spanish shoes, I’m leaving for Spain today with the love of my life. We’re going to hit up Sevilla and tool around the countryside. Oh, and we’re fitting in a short jaunt to Marrakech because, well…did you know Africa is so close to Spain?!?
Last March 18, one of Scott’s birthday gifts to me was an invitation to cash in all our carefully accrued credit card points and hit up the European destination of my choice for my 30th birthday. I couldn’t have come up with a better gift myself!
(From the latest of my international travels: a solo trip to Guatemala to visit my mom.)
But I’d like to tell you a secret: I’m a little intimidated. As a matter of fact, I’m always a little intimidated when going to a foreign land – even if it’s just a party where everyone else seems to know one another or a boutique where I am clearly out priced. Which is precisely why I do these things and, to the point, why I travel.
An example:
In 2001, my dad I were spending two weeks in the Umbrian province of Italy and we decided to go for a hike in a nearby state park. We were discussing the Italian flora and the oddly frequent “Madonna con Bambino” statues when – out of nowhere! – we found ourselves in a very precarious situation. We were surrounded by a dozen skinny-to-the-bone canines in what seemed to be a country “village” of three dilapidated buildings. Clearly, we were lost and possibly, we were dinner.By the time a young Italian woman with a babe at her breast materialized, called off the dogs and pointed us in the right direction, we had nearly become Catholic converts and had already begun praying to Anthony, patron saint of lost things. We were also moments away from losing our bodily functions.
Intimidating? Yes.
I don’t know what adventures await this next leg. I will no doubt return home feeling more competent, curious and humble. I will be bigger and the world will feel smaller. Which is good because I’ve got this business I run and this love affair I maintain and a crazy family I spend time with. Somehow, packs of growling dogs who definitively do not speak English manage to put all of those adventures in perspective.
Tags: celebration, change, fear, travel
I can’t WAIT to hear about all that comes your way in Spain and Morocco!
[...] to watch, but we’ve made do. There are other things to spend money on – organic food, Spanish shoes, Spanish hotels. You get the [...]