Eastern Europe Exploring

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After spending ten weeks in the one location, the prospect of packing my bags and getting ready to go full nomad was super appealing.

The ten weeks spent in Croatia accumulated to what was has been one of the best summers of my life. Working at Camp California has entailed days doing activities with kids from a whole collection of countries across Europe. The children I have met and worked with have some of the most incredible stories. These are kids who speak multiple languages fluently, have lived in many different countries, and have experienced things in life that I didn’t even know about when I was their age. I’ve never worked with a demographic of children like this before and having conversations with such affluent and privileged kids really gave me a broad insight to a lifestyle that is miles away from what I have known.

Over the summer we had five sessions, and new kids came each session. As counsellors, we were assigned to a cabin in which we lived with 5-7 girls, depending on the session. In session one I had girls aged 9-10, sessions two and three I had 12 year old girls, session four I had 9-10 year old girls again, and then session five I my girls were 13. Each child was unique and individual and had an amazing personality that was so much fun getting to know. We ate meals together, we lived together in the cabin, and we got to know all the shining things about each other while creating memories that would last a lifetime.

My job consisted of choreographing dance classes, putting together gymnastics routines, going stand up paddle boarding or kayaking with the children, or taking a bunch of kids on mountain bike trails and seeing some breathtaking scenery along the way. I somehow ended with the primary role of being the dance teacher, which for someone who lacks rhythm and has never choreographed anything before, this was quite a learning curve. But it turned out that my creative flair was able to mould itself to this new role and I thoroughly enjoyed working with a different group of kids each week and coming up with some cool dance moves to a song of their choice.

My office was the Adriatic Sea and my co-workers were incredible people from all over the world who all shared the same sense of enthusiasm and passion for life and travel. Over the time we worked together, friendships formed in a way that only happen at a camp environment. These friendships formed naturally and in their own time as personalities that were just made to get along were drawn together. Here in Croatia I met some of the most interesting, funny, easy going, and genuine people who have given me happiness, confidence, as well as new travel buddies to share my adventures with.

There were nights at Camp California where I would find myself just staring at the map of Eastern Europe on my phone and finding liberation in the thought that I could go literally anywhere. And now that the job is finished, it is time to go everywhere.

The next three weeks present some amazing opportunities to explore new cities, countries, and cultures. From Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina to Montenegro, my life is about to be filled with days of endlessly inspirational sites.

Thinking ahead to the days to come feel me with ridiculous happiness and it is hard to stop the goofy smile spreading across my face. The adventures to come are to be spent with beautiful new friends, as well as reunions with people in my life who mean so much to me. First, returning to Cornwall to once again see my friend from Texas after saying goodbye in May. After traveling, living, and working together for 8 months, I have certainly felt something missing from my travel life without her. There will be plenty of stories to share and so much to catch up on, and we have the best location to do this. Our blessed lives continue as we have planned to stay with the delightful people we house-sat for back in January. These beautiful and generous people have once again opened their doors to us and are happy to have us back for more champagne and laughter.

In case this reunion won’t be emotionally overwhelming enough, I am then meeting up with my sister in Paris. After being apart from the one person who has been there beside me for my entire life for 10 months, it is impossible to describe how overjoyed I am to see her again. And to see her in Paris, a city that I have adored and admired for years, is literally like a dream come true. I am extremely excited for my sister to embark on her first European adventure and see more of the world, and I am so grateful that I will get to be part of her experience.

After the travels with my sister are complete, there is approximately a three week void in my life in which I have nothing planned. At this stage of being abroad, I am very comfortable with the fact I have no set plans and I feel enticed by the adrenaline of just going where the road takes me. Currently the only thing I know is that I need to be in France to work for two weeks in late October, and from there I will make my way to Turkey and catch a flight from Istanbul back to the Southern Hemisphere on November 7. I still laugh to myself when I think back to the compulsive organised and anxious person I used to be when planning anything, and now here I am on the other side of the world with the most relaxed and free mindset I’ve ever had. It is an entirely exhilarating way to feel free.

Wherever I end up around Europe, it will certainly be busy and hectic and my backpack will be tossed around cars and trains and buses and planes without respite.

Part of the process of going full nomad and traveling around is doing more freelance writing work. Over the summer I have continued working as a writer, but the time retrains and the busy schedule of working at a camp made this very difficult and rather stressful. Yet somehow through the jam-packed weeks I managed to keep up the articles and miraculously meet deadlines to keep the cash coming in. Now, with my freedom back and easier access to the glorious internet, I’m looking forward to loitering in cafes in new cities and typing away at my computer.

As I write this and reflect on how my writing skills have developed over the past months as I have managed to turn my passion into something that I can almost call a job, I once again feel extremely grateful to have this skill. During my time at Camp California, it became known to my co-workers that I work as a freelance writer and I spent plenty of time explaining just how it works as a job and how it has kept me abroad for so long. Like always, it was a difficult thing to explain and I never wanted to go into too much detail for fear of boring people. I was pleasantly surprised then when so many people I worked with were genuinely interested in it and thought it was a really cool thing to be doing. Sometimes I do need to be reminded that I’ve achieved a pretty damn cool way to earning money to fund my travel dreams. For me I am lucky that I find writing so easy and natural and this certainly won’t be forgotten by me as I write my way across Europe over the next few months.

As I am now in my eleventh month of travel, and have just over two left, I still need to pinch myself as I think about all the incredibly cool experiences I have had. I’m extremely lucky to have seen this part of the world and had amazing adventures with wonderful people who I’ll never forget. It’s been an unbelievable roller-coaster and sometimes I need to take a step back and rely on hindsight to let me know just how far I’m come and what I’m achieved.



It’s been one hell of a crazy dream to follow, allowing this wanderlust to turn me into a free-spirited wanderer. I guess I’ve just got the right amount of crazy determination for this lifestyle.

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