European Checklist for THIS Weekend:

My best friend Amanda is coming home from college this weekend for my birthday and while she is here, we are going to attempt to make more travel confirmations for our trip (only 3 months away now....). Here are all the trip-related things I hope we get accomplished this weekend:

• Pay for Travelor's Insurance


• Book Hotel for Amsterdam (we have a 24hour layover there on our way back to the U.S.)


• Call about hotel confirmations at Petinos Beach Hotel and Santorini hotel


• Locate and purchase European electrical converter for European outlets


• Make payment on trip


• Ask travel agents approximately how much money we will need for each day


• Start shopping for cute "Europe Trip" clothes

AH! I'm soooo excited to go on this adventure, but I feel like there is still so many things to map out. Good thing Amanda and I are both super organized and detail freaks! Should be interesting!

Another Crazy Week...

I've been busily making the transition from my current LPS Kid's Zone Counselor job of the past 3 years to my brand new job as a sales associate at a tanning salon, and the word chaotic does not even begin to describe my life the past two weeks. Most days I leave my apartment at 6am and don't return until 9pm or 10pm at night. While this has been completely exhausting, I have to confess it's also been extremely exciting and secretly fun for me. I love to be busy. I love to be constantly running from here to there with no moments to break. Sure, my body is dead at the end of the day and at times I just want to stop, lay down and watch TV, but I love feeling like I'm being productive and DOING SOMETHING with myself and my life. No, this new job is not my dream career, but it is a fun challenge and while it's scary and very frustrating to be the "new girl" and need help to do the things that everyone else who's been there for several months or years can easily do, it pushes me that much more to learn and perfect my role in the new job. The 6am-9pm madness will shortly come to end because my last day of the old job is tomorrow and I have mixed emotions. In no way do I feel like I'm making a mistake in leaving that job, it will just be really hard to walk away from all the kids I've literally watched grow up over the past three years. However, the break will be nice! Especially with my birthday coming up this weekend! Should be interesting.... With the job changes, birthday, school and Europe, I really do feel like I'm beginning to enter into a brand new chapter of my adult life.

Less than Four months before Europe...and turning 22

My 22nd birthday is just a few days away and it's hard to believe that I'm also almost done with college. To be honest, I'm terrified for it all, but also extremely excited and ready for the change. I remember being younger and hearing my parents warn me about how fast it all flies by. I would usually just roll my eyes and laugh at them and it would go in one ear and almost immediately out the other. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I realized there might be some truth to what they were saying... It's the craziest feeling, growing up. I enjoy the fact that I've taken life lessons and grown emotionally throughout the past few years, and the future is still very open and exciting. However, the pace that life seems to fly by at is horrifying. My little brother is now in high school and driving a car alone, it seems like just a year ago I was his age (we're six years apart). Another factor that adds to the hard reality of growing up is that about half of my friends and peers are graduating from college this spring and will (hopefully) be employed with a job in their field of major by summer or fall. I too, will soon be embarking on this journey and I truly cannot believe that this point in my life is already here. Shortly after this recent realization I made the decision to follow through on a lifelong dream to trek across Europe with my best friend from high school, Amanda for three weeks in May. I've never been to Europe before, but after studying the French language, Art History and always being intrigued to travel there I'm ecstatic for May to get here. My future as far as a career in Public Relations may be a bit foggy, but I am going to make sure that I make these last few months of being a college student worth every single second. This is a time in my life that I will never have back again, and as quickly as time has been passing by I want to look back years from now and know that I made the best of it.