One Beginning Leads to Another

Some of the greatest memories I have are of when my mother would check me out of school early and we would take off and go somewhere. It could just be to the movies, or even back home, but occasionally, she'd surprise me with mini trips over the weekend.

Once, she picked me up with nothing packed at all. We drove for a while, then stopped at a thrift store. She said "pick yourself out a swimming suit. We're going to the beach!"
I laughed and played in the sun and ocean all weekend long, and my mother was my hero for this wonderful memory.

I'm not sure what it was first that caused me to get bitten by the travel bug. The easy answer would be to say that it's genetic; my mother is the same way. Always traveling, always craving new sights. Maybe it was the trip we took the summer I turned 14, a cross country road trip from Mississippi to California. Or the other trip right before college, through the Great Smoky Mountains of TN and NC. My first international travel (besides vacations here and there in Mexico) was in the summer of 2005, when I went on a missions trip to India. My time there changed me. From waking up to the sound of native tongues and clanking dishes, to the hot, stifling heat of New Delhi, to the unmistakable, mouth-watering scent of red curry hanging in the air.

From there, my heart for international missions grew into this bubbling inside of me that would not go away. The type of zeal and exuberance that would lead me to smile at every Indian I saw, and crave to be reunited with the orphan children I played with in the market. It is a feeling I can't describe, but if you could take the feeling I have when I see a plane take off, slowly making its way away from the clouds...bottle that up, and that would be this feeling. The way the song "Ventura Highway" by America makes me feel. The way I felt when I finished the books "On the Road" and "Into the Wild." The way I felt when we drove across the New Mexico desert on that trip at 14. How my dreams of hitchiking across the U.S. and taking care of children in other countries make me feel. It is all the same.

Whether here or there, it will always be the same.