The Fear of Being Naive

In approximately two weeks I will be traveling to the beautiful continent of Europe (specifically the country of Italy) where I will be studying abroad for a semester. My sister just came back from this program and clearly had the time of her life. 2013 in general has been a roller coaster ride, so the idea of wandering different countries, let alone a whole new continent, is just what I need. During my summer I was working two jobs (and a little bit of school) and my time in school can turn into months of monotony. So I think it's time for a splash of adventure! 2014 has started out a bit rough as I had caught the cold (perfect for traveling!). However as I learned in a recent Vlogbrothers video (which you can watch here), we, as humans, tend to look at things in a negative light. If something good happens, we might counteract that nice thought with a bad one. According to Hank Green, in this video, we need about twice as many good things to happen as bad to seem like things are going well. If the amount of good things that we see are about equal to the bad things, then we tend to view that as more bad things are happening. So, learning this, I've decided to try to look at things a bit differently during 2014. Yes, I may have a cold while I'm flying thousands of miles away....but....I am studying abroad in Europe! This is an opportunity that not everybody gets to experience.

So basically none of what I have written has to do with the title. That may or may not be because I wrote this title about a week ago and I continued writing this post today. What I'm saying is...I forgot what this was going to be about. Since it was originally being written in 2013, I'm assuming it was about a bunch of fears that I had going into this whole experience. Obviously, I need to be careful about things that I do in Europe. I'm going to be working there doing a video project for my school, so a lot of times I am going to be having a camera in my hand, looking like a tourist. This will most likely make me a target in some circumstances, so I need to keep that in mind. Although it is important to be cautious and aware when traveling in a different place, it's also important to enjoy your surroundings. Being too cautious might take away from the adventure.

Well, this is just some pre-travel jargon that I felt necessary to write. I'm a little rusty at writing, so give me some time. I know this is probably absolute shit, but hey, it's my blog. I'll grow and stuff.