First!

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February 7th 2012

Published: February 7th 2012

Do you know those lame cyber geeks that like to say "first!" when they're the first to comment on a post? Well, I guess there's some satisfaction to being the first of something, like a validation that you're not the last to the party.

This post is first and I guess it has to impress and wow the reader into reading more. But will it? This one is just going to be text! Maybe I could throw a picture in for introduction. Nah. I'll add one to my profile instead.

In my mind, travel blogs are essentially made up of two parts and an optional third part: writing, travelling, and (optionally) photography. Let's break it down a bit.

Writing has never been something I super enjoyed. Never ever. Writing papers in college was a difficult task that I always left to the night before it was due before I even began to write. I could pound out a page per hour and I'd get a decent grade but there was no satisfaction in it. It was something I had to do for the grade. But this? This is going to be something different. They always told me to pick a topic and write about something I was passionate about. But it always had to fall into some certain category. Persuasive, informational, etc. Plus at eighteen/nineteen years old, I didn't really know what my passions in life would be. I was studying to be an engineer, so how important could writing be in my life? With the exception of memos, emails, resumes, cover letters, blah blah blah. The difference here is passion.

I absolutely never even thought about a passion for travelling. Sure, I'd been on my share of road trips before: driving a few hours to see friends at other colleges, a few trips to florida for spring break (cliche!), and of course the family vacations but that was it. Those were viewed as mere breaks from real life (i.e. college). So where did my passion from travelling come from? When did I really begin to travel for the sake of travelling? My story takes me back to my freshman year of high school. In order to graduate from high school, I had to take three years of art or two years of foreign language. Art seemed like the perfect chance to discover my creative side. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was not artistically talented. I took a year off and decided to start the foreign language my junior year. I had the choice between spanish and french because both classes were taught by the same teacher. After discussing with some friends, it turned out she seemed to hate teaching spanish because of how large the classes generally were. My friends that took french loved it so it was a easy decision for me: french. After two easy years in high school, I was unable to continue the studies at community college since they didn't offer the third level of french. Unfortunately, I discovered that my university required three levels of foreign language for admittance. After discussing with the admissions office, they told me it was fine as long as I completed the requirement before graduating from the university. whew. I placed into a refresher course for the first two levels and during that class someone came in and told us about the opportunity to take the third level of french...in France...southern France. Excellent. I'm in. So in the summer of 2003, I spent a month in Avignon. I studied french, I studied the culture, I studied the people around me. It was amazing. I was hooked.

Since photography is an optional section, you don't really have to read this one. I picked up photography when I took a job that required six months of training in Italy. I know what you're thinking: why would anyone take such a terrible job? Heh. Well, God was good to me on this one and off I went on a brand new adventure. I knew zero people, knew zero of the language (maybe a few pasta shapes), and had never even heard of Genova (Genoa) before this job offer came to me. I knew I would have many weekends so I picked up a new digital camera. I had never been interested in photography because I had not been to many fantastic places and I was unable to see the beauty of the places I had been. I mostly went places because of the people I would be with, not so much the place itself. For the trip to France, I had a 35mm camera so a digital camera was really cool for me. I picked out an Olympus camera because it was super small. About two weeks into my trip, I went to Roma (Rome) and about midway through the first day, I dropped my camera and broke it. Crap. But that's a story for another time. Upon a suggestion from an English friend, I upgraded the next year to a Panasonic Lumix with 10x optical zoom. A little bit bigger and a lot better. The next year, my companions on a trip to Germany got sick of me saying 10x. I took over 1000 pictures in 11 days. The year after, I decided to upgrade again to a digital SLR: a Canon Rebel EOS T2i (550D). I discovered that I was taking fewer pictures but better pictures. I discovered photography things and became much more interested in how to take better pictures. This is my current camera and I still have much to learn on how to use it.

So that's the three in a nutshell as they apply to me and you're going to see them all put to use here in this blog. Now I just have to figure out where to start recapping the many years of my travelling life...

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