Serendipity…?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got here.

It feels like I’ve known forever that I wanted to study abroad in France.  It’s been a long time coming, ever since high school language teachers told me about their study abroad experiences.

But I think the moment, or moments, that sealed the deal, without me even knowing it, was visiting Spain and Portugal when I was sixteen.

The trip was planned through my high school.  There were around twenty students, three of whom were and still are my best friends.  I still don’t know how we were lucky enough to do that at sixteen.

That was the first time I went to Europe, and thinking back on how I felt every morning of that trip makes my chest feel tight.  It’s the swell of happiness, thankfulness, and also a twinge of sadness that the experience will always be in the past.

I’m sure we looked naïve and were endlessly obnoxious, but I felt like I was in a whole new world, living out the Cheetah Girls 2 (queue “Strut”).

I was way more excited to go to Spain before we left.  To be completely honest, I thought of Portugal as just a few stops on the way to Spain.

I could not have been more mistaken.

Portugal has to be one of the most underrated countries in Europe.  It is breathtaking, but modest.  The people are extremely friendly.  It doesn’t feel as modernized or maybe Americanized is a better word.  It feels more “old world.”

Maybe I just have a bias because it was the first European country I visited, and for that it will always have a special place in my heart.

While we were there, we visited a town called Algarve.  I could write pages and pages about how beautiful it is, but because you are a busy individual so here are some photos for reference:

In Algarve, we visited an area called Cape Saint Vincent.  This cape is protected by ragged cliffs that jut out of the sea.  Despite centuries of visitors, it feels untouched except for its guardian lighthouse.  You are enveloped by stone, sea, and sky.

Our guide told us that in the time before Portugal’s beloved Magellan and da Gama, and the world’s beloved Columbus, no one knew what was beyond these cliffs.  They feared what lived beyond in the unknown sea.

This was the Western most point of the known world.  This was the edge of the world.

To us youths who had just a few days before stepped foot on a new continent, that felt magical.  We were not just on top of the world, but at its precipice.

Wind whipping, sea sparkling, cloaked by blue sky.  I felt so tiny, but so free.

We scrambled to take pictures, running and shouting over the wind.  (If you know my friends you know we aren’t quiet.)

The world was quite literally our oyster.

It was a moment that should live inside a snow globe, a perfect scene suspended forever.  But that’s the thing about moments like that, no matter what you can’t make them last.  You can’t bottle them up.

That night we stayed at a beautiful 4-star hotel that was nestled into the yellow cliffs and faced the ocean.  Our tour guide swore it had to be a mistake that we were staying in a place this nice.

We hiked up the hills and stood overlooking the sea.

I love the ocean in a way that is hard to describe.

There’s something so comforting about putting your toes in the water and knowing you’re connected to every coast by that sprawling body.  Even high above it on the cliffs, I felt that connection.

I never really understood the term serendipitous, but thinking of it now that’s how I would define that word, being next to the ocean and feeling its presence.

Chrissy and I climbed back up the cliffs as the sky turned gold.  Mesmerized, we stayed watching the sun set for so long that we forgot dinner.

Drunk with excitement, we stumbled into the empty dining room laughing and scavenged what was left of the buffet.

It had been, to put it blandly, a wonderful day.

For this part of our journey, our rooms were in triples, so I was not rooming with Chrissy, Bridget, and Alexis.

We weren’t allowed to leave our rooms after bed check, but I had joked I was going to climb up into their room. The balconies of the building were staggered like stairs from one floor to the next.

It was a balmy, starry night.  Bed check came and went.  My roommate had fallen asleep.  I was freezing in our air conditioned room.

I went to sit outside in the warm air and saw just how many stars there were.

Suddenly, I could hear the faint giggling of my friends a few balconies above me.  This was a night I didn’t want to take in alone.

Why the hell not?

It was too dark to see their faces very clearly when I popped my head up over their railing, but from their shouts I could tell they were shocked.

It seems so innocent now, but at the time I felt like the ultimate rebel, sneaking out past curfew and scaling balconies.

We pulled out blankets to snuggle under and stared up at the stars.  We talked and talked while the night wore on.

I think that very well may have been one of the best days of my life.

It’s a feeling that will stay with me forever, pure excitement.  I felt it every morning on my second trip to Europe too.  What are we going to do and see today?

Sometimes when I’m at school and walk around on an unusually cool summer morning, it reminds me of our cool mornings in Germany, our first destination of the second trip.

Before my brain can process what the air reminds me of, I get a little buzz of excitement.  In the two short weeks I was there, the feeling of cool summer mornings and the anticipation of adventure became intertwined.

That’s the feeling that brought me here.

No doubt, living here is different than just traveling.  The excitement has to wear off at some point.  You have a routine, (a few) responsibilities, etc.

But then I’m on the metro towards the end of line six, and the Eiffel Tower makes its grand appearance, brooding over the Seine.  I can’t help but look.

Or I finally feel the sun on my skin while wandering around Montmartre, and I get that jolt.  Of being completely present and completely intoxicated with that moment.

That feeling that made me want to keep learning French, to declare a minor, to declare a major, to come here.  To do whatever it takes to keep exploring, to have a purpose to traveling.

I don’t know exactly how I’ll spend the rest of my life or what my true calling is.

But I hope to keep finding perspectives that make me realize how big the world is and how tiny I am.

Because that feeling is more of a calling than I could ever need.