My Year Around the World

One year around the world. 28 countries. 4 continents (5 if you count North America). I don’t even know where to begin. I will never properly have the words but I am going to do my absolute best to recap my year around the world for you. This is my full year around the world journey.

This whole dream of mine started right before Covid in December 2019. My best friend Amelia and I headed to Europe over Christmas break for my 20th birthday/New Year’s Eve and explored Lisbon, Paris, and Amsterdam and that trip gave me the travel bug big time. I had finally started properly saving some of the money I was making working as a dance teacher and knew I wanted to prioritize spending it on travel.

I was planning out in my head where all I was going to travel to during various school breaks and was so excited about this new passion I had. I had big plans that summer to visit Australia, New Zealand and Fiji on my study abroad and South Africa later that summer with my sister. Well, as we all know, that didn’t happen. 

All during quarantine I tortured myself by watching hours upon hours of YouTube videos all about travel and spent that time living vicariously through people who were traveling full-time. After lots and lots of research, I realized if I saved reallllly hard for the next 2.5 years, I’d be able to do my own around the world trip. I could make this dream a reality. 

I spent the rest of college teaching dance and nannying and saving as much as I could. When I got this goal in my head, my view on money changed. This beer is a night at a hostel in SE Asia. This Chipotle is a bus ticket to a new country. I had a goal and knew what I needed to do to achieve it. This is something I’m very proud of. 

I kept this dream of mine a secret for a while. What would people think? I just spent 4 years working to get a degree and then I’m going to up and leave to travel for a year. As much as I try not to, I care deeply what others think, especially those close to me and I was afraid of the response I would get. I sat on it for a while and dreamt quietly until the conversation of post grad plans started coming up. I needed the social accountability and so I started sharing this dream and the responses couldn’t have been better.

Surprisingly, everyone was so supportive. It made me feel good about my decision despite how scary it felt at times. It was hard watching everyone around me get excited about moving cities, starting their careers, and transitioning into an adult life. No one was doing what I was doing and at times, I questioned if this was really the right thing to do or if I needed to grow up and get a damn job. Maybe that sounds like a first world problem and maybe it is. Boo me, I’m about to travel the world for a year but when you graduate from a school like UGA and everyone around you is excited about their high-paying fancy business jobs, I felt a bit like a fish out of water. I wasn’t taking that path. 

A lot of people would ask me who I was going with, to which I would say “myself” and some of the reactions were priceless. Many couldn’t fathom the idea of someone traveling around alone, let alone a young woman. Some were envious that I had the guts to do it. Few disapproved but the reactions didn’t matter to me. I wanted to do it alone. I knew better than anyone that I was capable. Above all though, this was a journey I knew I needed to take alone. I wasn’t doing this for anyone other than myself. I wanted to grow and change and experience this for myself and the only way to do that was by myself. 

I had no real date I wanted to leave at or no real first destination in mind. I knew I wanted to start in Europe but it didn’t really matter where. This dream of mine took up all my free thoughts. If I had time to kill, I spent it browsing Google Flights, watching travel videos, and dreaming about a life of travel. 

In August of 2021, I was browsing Hopper for flights to Europe and found a $200 one-way flight to Madrid via Delta. I couldn’t believe it. It flew out of JFK but I knew a flight to New York plus the $200 flight would still be cheaper than anything I was seeing out of Atlanta. It left 2 weeks after graduation.

I bought the flight then and there and with accumulated miles, I spent $22 in total on that flight to New York and New York to Madrid. The only reason it wasn’t free was because each flight had an $11 tax I had to pay. That was it. I was officially doing it. 

I graduated from UGA on May 12th with a degree in Advertising, a certificate in New Media, a one-way flight, and a dream to see the world. 

Spain

France

Monaco

Czech Republic

Germany

Austria

Italy

Vatican

Poland

Hungary

Slokavia

Slovenia

Bosnia

Montenegro

Croatia

Truth be told (and I would have never admitted this at the time) I spent a lot of that summer incredibly lonely. I wasn’t the best at approaching people in hostels so if people didn’t come to me, I just wouldn’t converse with people for a while. What I found though is that the perfect person always came up to me when I got just a little too lonely. I enjoyed the freedom and liberty that came with solo travel but you can only eat dinner by yourself so many times before you start to miss the mundane simplicity of a dinner conversation.

Someone to ask if you should get pizza or pasta, wine or beer, am I too full for gelato? (You’re never too full for gelato, but it’s nice to tease the idea every once in a while). As I said though, that perfect person always found me and my mood would instantly change. Meeting other travelers was one of my favorite parts about what I was doing and everyone I was meeting was so amazing. So to everyone I’ve met along the way, you changed my life and I’ll forever thank you for that. 

Even though I did spend a decent amount of time feeling lonely, I learned to grow through the loneliness. I can honestly say there’s not one thing I feel like I couldn’t do by myself now. That summer was really important for me. I mentioned that I don’t think I’ll ever properly have the words to describe the last year of my life but in a way I do. I’ve been writing in this yellow notebook since I started my travels and spent some time reading it through like a novel a few weeks ago. I had been writing the words all along. I watched myself grow from that summer of loneliness, to some scary days in Africa, to a hard time in Everest, to some sad days back home, to the best time of my life in Australia, and everything in between. The highest of highs and some really low lows are written down in that book. 

Anyways, I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself. After Europe, I spent almost 3 weeks touring around Turkey and loved every minute of it. I met some amazing people in Cappadocia and got to cross one of my major bucket list items off- flying in a hot air balloon in Cappadocia. 

From Turkey, I flew down to South Africa. Now spending a month in Africa was not on my 2022 bingo card. South Africa and New Zealand had always been my 2 dream countries but when I initially left for my trip, Covid restrictions were still in place for many countries and at the time, most countries wouldn’t let you travel there if you had been in SA recently due to the rise of Omicron there. Luckily, all things changed and I was getting a little too bored and lonely in Europe so I called up my friend Kristen and asked if she was crazy enough to extend her trip by 6 weeks to spend it with me in Africa and Nepal. 

I didn’t really know how to talk about what those 6 months looked like for me. When people asked about my travels, I didn’t know where to start but if they didn’t ask me, then I felt isolated and alone. Truth of the matter is that I didn’t know what life at home was like and the people in my life didn’t know what my life abroad had been like. It became hard to communicate. 

How was I supposed to explain the life I had lived for 6 months when there had been so much change, growth, loneliness, fear, and extreme happiness that occurred in those 6 months. How was I supposed to properly explain the impact some of the people I met along the way had on me? How was I supposed to explain that a brother and sister in Bosnia had me reevaluate the way I look at my life? Or that the women I met in South Africa made me change the way I look at strangers and that she made me want to be a more understanding and accepting human? How was I supposed to explain that not everyday, in fact most days, were not perfect even though it may have looked like it? Every response and conversation I was able to have about my travels seemed insignificant. I was never able to portray the magnitude of the life I was living, the things I was learning, the way I was changing, and the way I saw the world and the people of it. 

I’m still looking for the answer to those questions. I don’t know how I’ll ever properly be able to explain these things but that’s okay. That’s why I took this journey alone. I didn’t do it for anyone other than me. These were things I wanted to learn on my own. I don’t need to be able to explain all these experiences to everyone but it can feel a bit isolating when you have no one to properly share anything with.

Anyways, my time at home came to an end and I boarded my flight to Melbourne, Australia a few days after Christmas. I had 4 months to finish my trip before I needed to head home to watch two of my best friends get married to each other! My time in Australia was simply the best two months of my life and to everyone I met there, I miss you all and am forever grateful for the time we spent together. 

From Australia, I was supposed to head straight to New Zealand but as they tend to do, my plans changed and I flew to Bali to kill time in Asia before it was time to pickup a cute camper van with 2 of the friends I made in Australia. From Bali, I flew to Vietnam and sped my way up the country with my friend, Arian, before flying to Christchurch to start the end of my journey. 

I was talking with a friend I met in Australia a little while back and he had asked me how I changed during my travels and I told him I think I more-so rediscovered myself. I found the spark in me that had been missing for a while. Of course there’s been a lot of other changes but the main thing is self-confidence in all facets of my life. Self-confidence in who I am as a person, the way I look, my thoughts and feelings, and the ability to just be alone. There’s not one thing I don’t think I’m capable of now. Sometimes I need to remind myself of everything I’ve accomplished this past year and the feeling of confidence and determination I had to succeed in this journey. This past year has been one of the most formative, important, and selfish things I’ll ever do. But I’m a firm believer in being selfish and always knowing your worth and doing things for yourself and no one else. 

I don’t know how to end this other than just ending it. My biggest fear is forgetting what this year was like and what all it taught me so thank you for letting me post about it so I can at least have some digital memories of it all. It’s been one hell of a year.