#day: zero

Airports are very in-between places. Most travel stopping points tend to be like that. It’s quite fitting for me to be in this kind of in-between place, first because I’m still in the process of heading off to Europe for two months, and second because if I wasn’t here I’d miss my flight. Wouldn’t want that!

So here we are, sitting in the airport in Chicago. Why Chicago, you ask? Well, here’s a pro tip for budget travelers in the Michigan area: flights from O'Hare airport in Chicago are way cheaper than Detroit if you can get a ride down here. Since I’m about to blow all my hard-earned savings on the vacation of a lifetime over the next few months, I’m all for saving as much money as possible where I can.

(For those of you wondering why I, a thrifty person by nature, would ever spend so much money on a trip- well. I won’t get a proper vacation for the next six years, ok. PhDs are wild.)

We’re about half an hour away from boarding our eight hour flight to Dublin at the moment. Excitement abounds, along with a rather severe case of nerves. See the picture on this post? That red backpack, along with a smaller blue backpack peeking out from the gap between Mercedes and me, contains all the worldly possessions I have to work with for the next two months. I’m literally going to be living with only the things I can carry on my back. Aka I have a grand total of six shirts for the next eight weeks.

…I’ll just go ahead and file this experience under ‘Things You Can Really Only Do When You’re Young And/Or Really Healthy’.

Still, despite my probably unfounded worries about what on earth I’m going to wear (clothes) and how I’m going to carry everything I have around (by gritting my teeth and getting super fit, apparently), I’m very very excited to begin my adventure to a new continent! I’m about to take so many pictures. Maybe I’ll even process them not a year later, too. What a concept.