And so it begins...

There are certain moments that are typical to almost any traveling adventure, especially when it’s an international flight…

There’s the frenzied rush through security as you whip out your laptop, remove shoes, jacket, and the contents of your pockets and throw everything on that stupid machine, take a deep breath, walk through the metal detectors, and frantically gather everything back together again.

You rush to your gate because, at least for me, I can’t feel settled until I get to my gate and see my destination calmly displayed on the correct monitor. And then there’s that eerie and sudden calm of actually being at your gate and realizing that you still have an hour to kill before the plane even begins boarding.

There’s that moment when something inevitably goes wrong – you will miss a train, a bus, a connection. Your flight will be delayed, cancelled, or rescheduled, or you will “misplace” your cell phone in the security line for a mere half an hour (my bad). Sure, there are times when nothing goes wrong, but let’s be real – that’s not the norm of traveling anymore.

If something does go wrong there’s that moment of absolute panic, that sinking in your chest, when you see the red DELAYED next to your flight, or, as it was today, you receive an email regarding “serious changes in your itinerary” asking you to call immediately to reschedule.  There is an anxious, awful moment where you have to completely upheave all of your original plans and readjust to a longer wait, a missed connection, or arriving a little later. See, that’s the funny thing about traveling - no matter how prepared you think you may be, no matter how many hours you’ve spent organizing and packing and re-packing, no matter how many maps, itineraries, and tickets you have printed - you can never be fully prepared.

Then there’s the relief of takeoff, the quiet, uncomfortable flight that leaves you with a kink in your neck and a few hours of half-sleep. There’s the mad rush on the way out to grab your bags from the overhead compartment without smacking someone over the head on it’s way down, and there’s that relieved exhale when you actually see your bag come around that bend on the baggage carousel.

And today I had that moment of walking out into the terminal and suddenly being surrounded by thousands of people who spoke a language I couldn’t even begin to understand. In the States you don’t realize how much you tune in to what the people around you are saying, and there’s something comforting in understanding snippets of conversation. When that suddenly disappears you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore… (or Vermont, as the case may be).

But at the end of the day I arrived at my destination - a picturesque little house boat fit for a princess, with my best friend from High School, sipping a cup of tea. After a whirlwind of packing up my room, fitting my life into a suitcase, saying goodbye to people I love dearly and will miss terribly, and a hellish day of traveling – I am here.  And that is perhaps the most satisfying moment of all.