2016 Update

The year is now 2019. I evidently started this post in 2016 and never finished it or published it. So here, world, is some new content from 2016-Kim.
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Hi. So I was partially right in that I forgot about my blog, but only for a year and a half as opposed to two years. Woo! And a lot has happened in my life.

So I ran and FINISHED my half marathon in September '14! It was rough. And I could barely walk afterwards. But I did it.

Then I moved into my new apartment with Jensen! And then, 5 days later, my mom passed away suddenly. She had torn a muscle in her left calf a few weeks earlier and apparently multiple blood clots formed and caused a pulmonary embolism. She passed out at work one day, her heart stopped in the ambulance, and that was it. And my life was forever changed.

Over the next few months, my life was basically consumed by working on my dad's house, clearing out junk, going through papers, and getting it in order. Around March '15, my dad, brother, and I decided we wanted to move to Phoenix to live by my sister. Some other events further cemented that, and by April '15 I had approval from my company to move and work remotely. So the next few months after that were consumed by packing things up in my dad's house and cleaning to get it up on the market (which it still isn't). Since then, my brother has decided to stay in Atlanta a while longer, my dad is still working on getting out here, and I moved to Scottsdale in October '15.

We did take one family cruise to the southern Caribbean in July, and saw Curacao, Grand Turk, and Aruba. It was a lot of fun! Aruba was my favorite, and I definitely want to go back on my own for a longer period of time. And then I went to Guatemala for work (also fun! hiked up a volcano and roasted a marshmallow) and California (also for work, but not quite as fun, and I was sick).

And then I moved in October. My move consisted of me, two suitcases, and a cat on a plane! I found a roommate online and went for it. The weekend after I moved, I drove to Albuquerque and met up with Brenna (who planned out a 3-week solo road trip, timed perfectly to meet up with me that weekend) and we went to the International Balloon Fiesta. And it was AWESOME. So freaking cool. Standing in a field at sunrise with balloons inflating all around you. By the end, 500+ balloons were up in the sky. It was incredible. Might even go back next year.

Then I worked on getting settled in to my new home. It's so weird that I live on the opposite side of the country now.

2014 Update

Oh yeah, I had a blog. Thought I'd send out a little life update since my October 2012 post. I know, I know, you guys have been on the edge of your seats, checking up daily, just praying for a new post from me. Well, your prayers have been answered!

So Alaska DID happen, in May 2013. I only got to go for 1 week, on a cruise along the inside passage, which was incredible. We left out of Vancouver (where we visited the Kiapalano Village and suspension bridge), then along the way we visited Ketchikan (floatplane and lumberjack show), Juneau (whale watching and Mount Roberts Tramway), Skagway (White Pass & Yukon train ride), Glacier Bay and Seward (Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center). Then I flew home while my parents and brother rented an RV and drove around more of Alaska.

I did not go to Munich for Oktoberfest last year. Nor am I going this year. Maybe next year? Or the year after? I'll go eventually!

In September 2013 I traveled to Chicago for my mom's cousin's daughter's wedding. That was my first time seeing Chicago! I got to ride around with the wedding party on a trolley after the ceremony, which ended up being a pretty good way to see the city. I also saw the real Optimus Prime! And I rode in a stunt plane with my mom's cousin's husband. Did some loops and rolls and all kinds of stuff. It was pretty neat.

My week of vacation time for 2014 was spent on a Caribbean cruise in March. I snorkeled and relaxed on some beaches, rode a horse through the jungle, sailed in a regatta, drank lots of alcohol and stirred up trouble and just had a good ol' time.

Then in April, I took a 3-day weekend to Louisville, KY for the (weekend before the) Kentucky Derby! Right in time for my birthday. Bet on some horses (and mostly lost) and drank out of fancy glasses.

I also visited Pensacola recently for a weekend to get in a little more beach time before Fall. That's about it on my travel experiences since 2012! I might have had a few more little weekend trips here and there, but this about sums it up.

Next year I will probably take a trip to Phoenix to visit my sister and brother-in-law, since I haven't made it out to see them since they moved. Was HOPING to go to the Super Bowl since it will be in Phoenix this year, but that was before I realized tickets would be $1000+. Oops. And since I get a whole TWO WEEKS of vacation next year, who knows what else the future holds!

In other news, on a more permanent-travel basis, I'm moving in a month and a half! I decided two years is long enough to live with the parents after college. I paid off my car and am ready to get moving, so I will be moving a whopping exit and a half south to Alpharetta with my bff Jensen.

On a more literal-travel basis, I've taken up running over the past couple of months. In February, I participated in my first ever race, a 5k, and boy was it rough for me. But then I kept up the working out, and ran in the Peachtree Roadrace in July, a 10k, and had a much better time. Now I'm training for a half marathon on September 6th, yikes! I've gotten up to 7 miles so far, which is pretty damn awesome for me, but I still have a ways to go in 3 weeks. I'm running 9 miles this Sunday, wish me luck!

Anyway, once the rent hits, I likely will be traveling a good deal less. But maybe I'll blog about my lack of travel experiences and life out of the nest, how comfy or not-comfy my couch is, and about how well I'm able to keep up with the running? Just wait and see! It's probably more likely I'll forget about this blog for another 2 years. But we'll see. Farewell!

Not Doing Much...

Btw, Alaska? Didn't happen. And now I have a real job, 15 minutes from my parents' house, so I'll be in Cumming, GA indefinitely! And my parents are going on a cruise without me. So i have zero travel opportunities on the horizon until I earn vacation time. Might try to go to Munich for Oktoberfest next year. We'll see. Until then, don't expect much from this blog!

Alaska

My parents were originally wanting us to visit Alaska for 2-3 weeks right after my graduation, but my mom just got a new job and can't take that much time off yet. So, if I can get a summer internship, then we can probably go to Alaska when that's over, and then I can hopefully set up a job to start when I get back from that. So there are still some travel opportunities on the horizon, even though Australia is out. Maybe I'll make this a work/travel blog instead of just a travel blog.

Jobs?

So Australia is officially out. It's tough to get good, accurate international background checks done, so there was just too much risk involved and my parents weren't happy about it. But, I do have one interview tomorrow and am setting up another for next week, both for full-time paid internships. I was kind of thinking I needed to get a paid internship first, since I don't have much work experience in my degree. I'd prefer the one that I'm in the process of setting up an interview for next week, but we'll see how it goes. I'm just happy to have some prospects for after graduation besides Kohl's!

Australia?

So it's been quite a while since I posted on here, but I was just thinking about how this time last year I was in Europe, and I'm kind of missing it. I do have new travel opportunities on the horizon, however, so I thought I'd post about that. Also, I was looking at Ankush's blog and he made a list of where he has been and where he wants to go, so I thought I would make one too! So first off, here is that:


Places I've been to:
United States
Canada
Mexico
Bahamas
Belize
Honduras
Cayman Islands
France
Spain
Portugal
Ireland
Germany
Switzerland
Italy
Vatican City
Croatia
Bosnia
Luxembourg
Belgium
Netherlands
Hungary
Austria

Places I want to go:
Australia
New Zealand
England
Scotland
Wales
Czech Republic
Brazil
Denmark
Greece
Sweden
Norway
Finland
South Africa
Japan
Alaska, Hawaii, & California




Now, about the travel opportunities on the horizon:


So the other day, a friend of mine started talking about the idea of Au Pairing in a foreign country somewhere after graduation. We started researching a bit, and I found a great one in Australia. I would really only have to Au Pair every other week, and have the off weeks to explore/travel. They want someone for a year, though, which is kind of a long time...but I think it would be awesome. I'm trying to convince my parents to let me go, because they really don't like the idea of me being across the world for a year, since 4 1/2 months last year was hard enough on them. But I'm definitely considering it, so I could be living in Australia in May. I'll keep you posted.

The End

So I realized that I never posted about my trip to Rome, and by now I've forgotten the exact day-by-day events, but I'll still post what I can remember with a few pictures since my blog feels a bit incomplete.

On the way to Rome we had a few hours in Paris, so we had a little picnic by the Eiffel Tower and I finally got to see the tower during the day. Then we spent the night in a parking lot waiting for our bus to the Paris Beauvais airport. We hadn't made hostel reservations because we thought we'd be able to take the bus early and then sleep in the airport, but we couldn't get a bus until 6am, so we were definitely regretting that decision, but every single hostel/hotel was booked. The night was miserable. It was SO cold - we put on pretty much all the clothes we had, and were still freezing. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep. That would be a trend this week, since we spent another night in a train station and another in a different airport.

I had about 4 full days in Rome, and did pretty much everything I was wanting to do there. When I first arrived I did encounter some problems though. First, it took a while to find our hostel, and when we finally found it, we were told we didn't have reservations. For some reason the reservation didn't go through on hostelworld, and I found out I did in fact not have any booking confirmation in my email. This was the guy's advice for us: "To have no hostel reservation in Rome is suicide." He did let us use his wifi and we found one hostel that had room left, Hostel Peter Pan. So we hastily made the reservation and set out to find it.

The hostel was definitely one of the worse hostels I've stayed at in Europe - probably why it had room available. The main issue was that the people were incredibly loud at all hours of the day. Also, the bathroom shower got water all over the place, so you were always walking through water. But we had a place to sleep, which was good enough.

One really cool thing about Rome is the plethora of free drinking water throughout the city. Any fountain with a spout has clean water, so if you carry a water bottle around with you, you'll have zero problem finding a place to refill it. Throughout the semester one thing we really noticed was the lack of water fountains in Europe, so Rome was definitely a nice change.

The first day we got to Rome, after we got to our hostel, we pretty much crashed right away (seriously it was like 5pm). The next day (Saturday I think) we walked around a bit and then went to the Vatican. We toured the museums, which not only had incredible pieces of artwork but were basically art themselves, since most of the walls were painted directly on and had insane ceilings.

We also saw the Sistine Chapel, which was incredible -

So the Vatican was pretty neat. You can't go in unless your shoulders and knees are covered, so I had to go buy leggings to wear under my shorts and looked pretty silly the entire day. And you have to go through security to get in. I did use the Vatican postal system to mail home a postcard, since its supposed to be one of the best in the world.

Sunday we planned to go see St. Peter's, and we weren't sure if we'd be able to get in since it was Sunday, but we went really early and got in no problem. Normally there is a HUGE line, but apparently 7am is fine. Going on a Sunday was actually really neat - we got to see part of a service going on inside (in English!).

We came back around noon to meet up with friends and it was PACKED with mass going on.

Here's everything else we saw that weekend -
- Piazza del Popolo, where we took a picture with Mickey Mouse

- Spanish Steps (packed)

-St. Peter's Square, which was actually really interesting. There are two places in the square where you can stand and 4 rows of columns in front of you line up and look like 1.

-Vittorio Emanuele II Monument

Oh and right by the momument there was some big event going on, with kids playing volleyball, a bike obstacle course, people skateboarding, and a band. And there were some green/anti-nuclear protesters or something. So we walked around there for a while and even got our first glimpse of the Colosseum.

-The Pantheon

-The Colosseum

-Palatine Hill

-Roman Forum

-Trevi Fountain

-lots of bridges and obelisks and ruins and fountains

And we went to Pompeii on one of the last days. It poured, so we didn't get to spend a whole lot of time there, but it was really neat. So that was Rome! Then we spent the night in the airport in Rome, flew back to Paris, where I trained back to Metz, got my luggage, trained to Zurich, and spent the next night in (and outside of for a few hours when we were kicked out) the Zurich train station waiting for the train to go to the airport to fly home to Atlanta. I'll end this post with a picture of me being homeless in Switzerland:

Oh and did I mention that Rome has the BEST pizza ever? I think I ate it about 5 or 6 times while I was there. Incredible. :)