Okay so it’s finally hitting me. My trip to India is literally days away and the nerves have finally caught up with me. But I’m not nervous about getting to adventure in a country I never thought I’d get the opportunity to learn about more than I did in AP World History. No, I’m actually nervous because of the fact that I’m so excited for this trip.

Now what in the world am I talking about? Good question. If you know anything about my past adventures, in high school I ventured to Paris and Barcelona with my friends. I was as hyped as anyone could be for that. A weekish with my friends, some cool teachers and HELLO WE WERE IN EUROPE. I will say this over and over again: that trip was the best and worst experience of my life.

Sure, there were a lot of highs to that trip. I had a few people I really cared about going, I got to go on an adventure, hell I even got one of my closest friends out of it (Love you Maria!) but that trip was one of the toughest things I had ever done. There was so much petty drama that I quickly lost sight of that adventure and was just aching to go home and get out of my high school.

That trip changed everything for me. I went from treasuring every moment at my high school to just wanting to get to the next part of my life. I became a really bad person and still to this day I’m still bitter about how quickly the trip turned bad for me that I’m still hesitant to go back to those places (except the castle, that was freaking amazing.)

India is something I have honestly been looking forward to a LOT longer than I had looked forward to that trip in 2012. I can honestly say that the context of this trip is significantly different than the previous one. For one thing, yes we will be sight seeing but there is a whole lot more of an academic aspect to it, not even including my travel journalist experience. I’m hoping since this trip doesn’t have as many variables, such as different friend groups, significant others and a hell lot less of free time to make things slightly awkward.

I really hope this trip is everything that my Paris and Barcelona Trip wasn’t. I’m very excited to be traveling with this group of people. I’m in a completely different mindset that I was back then – I’m looking for an adventure, not just trying to cross things off my bucket list. I’m hoping that my professor is right and that this trip will be something that it’ll take a lot more time to process and that I’ll be able to look back at it and be proud of what I did and what I experienced.

My mind is just going to be tumbling these types of thoughts right up until I end up at JFK on Sunday. I’ll be documenting everything here, so I guess time will be the ultimate test of seeing just how this trip goes. I don’t intend to hold back in any of my thoughts as we go (other than keeping the cursing to a minimum because that’s not classy in writing like this.)

Here’s to hoping my nerves are just getting the best of me because adventure is knocking at my door and I’m just about ready to see what’s behind it.