Well well well...what do we have here? I started writing up blogs from my interrailing stint in Europe two years ago and abondoned them when the going got, sniff sniff, tough. At present, I am living in Dublin and have just graduated with a BA International in English and Italian. At the moment I am looking for a job but am flirting with the ideas of travelling and doing a Masters in Journalism, both things I will more than likely end up doing but am first trying to figure out what order to do them in.

I have been around the block a few times. My first time abroad was at four months old to Corfu (a lovely little Greek Island) and for the first 17 years of my life, I was the lucky product of my wanderlust parents and got to go abroad twice a year somewhere in Europe: skiing in the winter (usually the Alps) and, eh, sunning in the summer (usually Spain, Portugal or Greece). At 10, North America became my second continent to visit when me and the clann went skiing in Vermont and I got to experience all things big like people, food portions, mountains and temperatures (-45 degrees to be exact...I got frostbite in my cheeks). At 11 and 12, I visited the Caribbean for the first time (St. Lucia and Barbados) and that's when my passion for the people and their laid back Caribbean spirit was ignited, leading to my successful art project on the tradition of Carnival and the Caribbean spirit. At 13, Australasia became my third visited continent when me, my mother, my father and my sister visited my brother Bernard in Australia for a month (Sydney, Cairns, Cape Tribulation and the Great Barrier Reef). It was my longest time away to date and we fell in love with the country so much that I was crying when we took off to return home and vowed that one day I would go back and see more of the country. I tried so many things such as bungee jumping and snorkelling in the shark-infested coral reef. At the age of 14, me and my parents visited the province of Murcia in Spain and this trip was to be my first step towards my getting to know a country well when my parents decided to purchase a home there. Most of the following easter and summer holidays were spent there and I had great fun getting to know the real Spain. I fell in love with everything about the place: the firey passion of the people and their dislike of nervous smalltalk and bullshit, the climate, the food, the Spanish way of living such as siestaing, wine in the afternoon and dining at midnight. At 18, I got to experience being abroad for the first time with a voice of authority - my parents - when me and two friends went to the party-friendly area of Hersonnosis in Crete for two weeks when I learned the big difference between a drinking holiday and a cultural holiday ;) and even managed to do another bungy jump on Star Beach! The following summer, I went interrailing around Europe for six weeks with two girls I barely knew and saw Denmark, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia and I got to see a totally different side of travelling. There were, of course, low points such as crime, getting stranded somewhere between Switzerland and Germany, being shipwrecked and other sticky situations but the good points always outdid the bad points...I had certainly developed my parents' wanderlust spirit and still look back on that voyage through rose-tinted specs! The following summer was spent living and working in Vancouver, Canada where I learned that despite two nations having many things in common, there were also many things we didn't have in common and working there was certainly a challenge. It was a memorable experience which included a trip to Whistler, Grouse Mountain and a month working for Greenpeace which has definately been my favourite job so far!!! The following summer (2005) was my second interrailing trip with three friends where I certainly was able to put what I learned my first time interrailing to use and we got to see Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague (again), Budapest (again), Ljubliana in Slovenia and Venice where I will never forget seeing Piazza San Marco for the first time and crying because it was so beautiful (and I was an ickle bit tipsy on il vino bianco!) Two months later, in September, was going to be the time when my life would change for the better, I moved to Urbino in central Italy to study Italian for a year. I couldn't possibly sum up my experience in a few sentences, it was fantastic. There was never a day when I wanted to go home...if I ever had a dull day I would say to myself: "at least I am not having this dull day in Dublin." Everything about that year abroad was eye-opening that I wouldn't even know where to begin. I look back on those days as the happiest moments of my life to date. I also made some of the most amazing friends for life from all over the world and to date, these friendships have brought me to places like Vilach, Vienna, Rome, Spain and Brighton and hopefully (if they have me) to Mexico, New York, more of Italy, Paris, the UK, Germany, Kilkenny and Galway!! I also got to travel around this beautiful country with these people and we saw some amazing places such as Verona, Venice, Padua, Perugia, Rome, Florence, Siena, Pesaro. Some unforgettable moments include seeing a 70+ year old man riding his vespa at high speed with his dog at his feet and when he noticed our gaze he shouted: "isn't it amazing? This dog is 11 years old!", watching Italy win the world cup against France in an amphitheatre on a steep Perugian mountainside, getting snowed into the campus accommodation for a week, getting a mystery illness and getting injected in the bum by a Doctor with a top hat and sunbathing on February the 2nd! I returned from my year abroad a changed person... i highly recommend the Erasmus experience...if you ever get the opportunity! Since I came back in July 2006, I have visited London, Madrid, Rome, Brighton and Exeter, mi casa in Spain and the volcanic landscape of Gran Canaria after securing a cheap last minute deal online. Before the year is out, I plan to go to Edinburgh with my friend Edwina and to see my sister who lives in London. PHEW!

I still really want to visit all of Asia, California, Alaska, Hawaii, Miami, New York, the South of France and Italy, more Greek islands, Africa, South America, Mexico and more Australia...

The following is my state of mind prior to my first interrailing trip in 2003...

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As I sit staring at the computer screen in my nearly not so longer office job, I imagine my desk turning in to a canoe and the blue carpet (which is made up of a horrible woolen material and is lined like Nerdy McNerdson corduroy jeans) becoming a swirling mass of water, perhaps a river. The fantasy is going well as it accelerates to a faster speed (like the flapping wings of a common bird! Hmmm...maybe a robin or a tit), and even the kettle boiling in the background provides perfect sound quality that will fit with the noises of either the city or junglescape. In the meantime, the other peoples' typing seem like the indistinguishable sounds that we can never work out while travelling, but still adds authenticity to the experience (in a "this is kind of different than usual" kind of way). For me, it's the reliable cricket (a noise that you'd know if you went on a 2 weeker to the Canary Islands as a child but could never ever find the source of), or water rats splashing past me as I think, with fear, what an interesting story it has the potential to become as I hold on to the two oars with my weedy arms for dear life, thinking of horrible rat stories (not caring or wondering in the 1st place if they are true or not) such as the one where the rat crawls up a golfer's trouser-leg, pisses on it and 3 hrs later the poor bugger (the golfer that is) is dead because the stupid rodent toileted in to an open graze! My fantasy is now more realistic as I envisage both nice and not-so-nice situations, but they are suddenly cut short by the horrible gone off fruit smell from my yellow bag which I catch in the corner of my eye. I was thrown off at first because I never had put fruit in that bag (i never knew chocolate could have such an off-putting odour... maybe a rat peed in there when i wasn't looking, ugh!) and then again because my imagination unfortunately didn't facilitate this alien object in my fantasy and as I quickly attempted to think up something that this bag with gearish patterns could be, like a random arm-band (those things you use when you begin to learn swimming as a child), I knew I was back to square one. "2 weeks left in this hell-hole" I keep telling myself. Enough time to sharpen my tools of fantasy for when the going may ever get tough.

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