Today I am grateful for travel...day #12.

I love, love, love to travel. Which is a little strange considering I suffer from severe anxiety but I love being abroad, there's something about being a stranger in a new country that I love.

My first trip abroad (I don't count my two trips to Mexico) was my freshman year of college, when I took a trip with the Interfaith Council to Rome, Italy. I was hooked. All the history every where it was amazing and magical, and despite having a man sneeze in my face on the subway, and pretty much only eating Gelato for 7 days (I'm a picky eater) I loved Rome.

This is my absolute favorite picture from Rome.

The next year Marcus and I with some friends took a spring break trip to London and Paris. This trip was even better because Marcus was with me (it was his first time out of the country) and he was such a great travel companion. He put up with me when we went on a ridiculous adventure in an attempt to locate John Wesley's house and chapel (only a Methodist would understand my strange desire to do this). We went to 8 museums in 7 days, took thousands of pictures and oddly enough I think one of Marcus' favorite memories of the trip is when I fell on the underground and couldn't get up because my hands were in my pockets. It was hilarious and he was laughing so hard he had tears running down his face (and the rest of the people on the underground were laughing as well).

 Our last night in London we planned really poorly and ended up sleeping on the floor at the airport (we forgot we would need somewhere stay after getting back to london from paris oops). So much of the trip was so random and we did everything as inexpensivly as possible but we had so much fun.

Of course then there was Zimbabwe. Also an incredible life changing expereince. I went on a work trip to Africa University the summer of 2005 and I don't fully have the words to describe how life changing and transformative the experience was.

Then I spent the summer abroad in Spain in 2006 studying spanish and spanish religious history. So many great memories from my summer abroad, many awkward moments and expereinces with the woman I lived with, but incredible all the same.

That same summer I went to portugal which was beautiful.

And in just a week I'll be traveling to Australia to attend the world parliment of religions confrence.

I adore traveling I hope Marcus and I will be a position that someday we can travel with Eli & Emerson so they too can expereince and enjoy the many wonders of our world.