If you ask me what my favorite day of the year is, the answer easily is the day that I am leaving on a trip. It is not my birthday, not Christmas, not Thanksgiving, it is what I call “boarding day”. I love packing, I love the drive to the airport, I love how everyone in the airport is going somewhere or coming back home. 

I did not travel that much when I was growing up. However, I did go to what are considered “popular destinations” for people living in Argentina . I visited Florida, New York, and California. However, other than the United States, I did not visit very many countries. 

In 2016, my dad’s work-team was based in England, so he had many business meetings there. In May 2016, he had to go to England again, but there was something that was getting in the way: it was my sister’s birthday, and three days later it was my birthday. With my family, we take birthdays very seriously, and my dad did not want to miss them. Alma was in fourth grade, and I was in eight grade, so missing school was not too big of a deal. We missed four days of classes, and we went to England and France.

I think it is silly to define one event as the one thing that changed everything, but I definitely think this trip had a huge impact on the way I view the world. It made me realize my love for new cultures, languages, and food. I feel like it awakened a sense of adventure within myself that I did not know I had.

After that trip, we were lucky enough to go back to Europe a few times, visiting a few new countries: Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the countryside of England. We also visited the Bahamas, and different parts of Mexico.

Because of this one trip, I know that I want to study International Business because I know for sure that I want my life to feel like an ongoing adventure, where I am in a different country every month.

Travel video that I made last year over Thanksgiving break

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

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