As the year comes to a close, I can’t help but get a little nostalgic for my travels in 2012. I have to mention that some were only penniless, because I was not the one paying the hotel bills… (thanks mom and dad!)

I started off the year in Cocoa Beach, Florida and Nassau for my little sister’s “Fabulous Birthday Cruise” as we’ve come to call it.

And the traveling didn’t stop that semester at college. In March I co-led a Mission Trip to New Orleans where we helped rebuild after Hurricane Katrina and immersed ourselves in the culture, good food and kind people.

We started off the summer with a little camping near Athol, MA and got to bring out the sunfish to sail a little on the lake.
And I followed it up with an Independent Study in Dance. I created a 20 minute piece along with three dancers about Emily Dickinson’s life and poetry. We were lucky enough to be able to take the piece two hours west to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA.

We watched the USS Constitution sail on the Fourth of July and visited the Tall Ships as the pulled into port in Boston.

And four days later I set off thousands on miles across the Pacific Ocean on my first solo travel adventure to Oahu. I researched how culture is presented in Hawaii and learned so much more through my experiences. The night before I left I could not for the life of me remember why I had decided to do this trip on my own. But being in Oahu, with all the wonderful people, living on my own around the spirit of aloha. Man, that was life changing stuff.
Then on to New York City and Nova Scotia in August. We saw the 9/11 memorial and the bull statue on Wall Street, saw Broadway shows, ate great gluten-free food, and visited new sites and statues around the city that we’ve never seen before.  Then we boarded the ship to Nova Scotia to see beautiful scenery, Peggy’s Cove, The Citadel, the Bay of Fundi, and, of course, the comic book store.
Then the road trip back to OWU!

In December we took the play “8” from Ohio Wesleyan to Heidelberg University to perform it for a new audience in a new place.
And for Winter Break we’ve visited family, gone skiing and driven all over snowy New England.

It has certainly been an incredible year. I’ve gotten to see a little more of my country, travel with family and friends, and learn something from others. I can only hope that 2013 will continue the trend. I’m looking forward to traveling to Fort Bragg in North Carolina in the spring, Haiti and perhaps Uganda in the summer and (fingers crossed) I’ll be off to India in the fall semester.

I wish all of you safe and happy travels in the New Year!!