Reality set in sometime in August of 2012. I was nearing the end of a year abroad in London, a year filled with vague memories of culture, booze, sex, love, language, and travel. I had set foot in places that I hadn’t even heard of until I arrived. I was hooked. Every minute, whether it was good, bad or ugly, was a new experience, and this was too much to simply walk away from, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I was out of money, my UK visa was about to expire, and I had a degree to finish in California so I join the 9-5 indentured servants of America’s middle class and work my way up to a bigger desk.
By this time in my travels, the thought of returning home just a few weeks later was enough to wake me up in the middle of the night with cold sweats. I would dream that I was back in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, and frantically wake up, relieved to find out I was still in an uncomfortable bed in an impoverished Eastern European city. Not that I wasn’t excited to see my family or friends in the USA, but leaving this life for the familiarity, lack of spontaneity, and general routine of life in the USA seemed almost like a death sentence. I likened it to a death of my life where I was truly content, and I was about to start over on the other side. Besides legal immigration status and a healthy amount of zeroes in my bank account, I had everything I could ever want back in London. How could I leave my beautiful Swiss girlfriend who knew more languages than the Rosetta Stone, the greatest friends I’d ever had from all over the world, or living in a location that allowed me to take a spontaneous weekend trip abroad?
Everyone has an addiction. Addiction has that negative stigma as something that will put you on the street and turn you into a worthless member of society, but I see it as anything that occupies your mind every minute of every day. Mozart started composing at age 5. Yes, he was the prodigy of all prodigies, but no one masters anything that doesn’t completely fill your mind every second of every day. Addiction can’t be forced, I guarantee Mr. and Mrs. Mozart weren’t grounding young Wolfgang for not practicing his violin. No one told Picasso he had to paint, or Bill Gates he had to work on computers. Some of the greatest minds have been addicts, as far as I’m concerned. I was 14 when I realized my addiction, and found the avenue to which I could direct my burning curiosities.
I’ve never really been great at anything. Sure, I’m good at a lot of things, but I have never been the stand out performer in any category. And that’s normal for most people, but I never thought much about what I was passionate about when I was growing up. I was painfully oblivious about popular music, and was never interested in watching or following sports. I remember being bored to death on Sunday afternoons when my dad would watch football, and trying my hardest to show interest when my best friend Sean tried to turn me into a fan of the Buffalo Sabres in third grade. I’ve never been one to spend a whole weekend playing video games, or following a hit TV show. Why should I watch someone else be successful while I’m sitting on my ass on the couch?
I was one of the few people from my small town who had seen what else was out there, so naturally, by my senior year of high school, I was borderline dying to get out. I decided to spend the next chapter of my life at a state school in Northern California, with a wild reputation for partying. I was elated at the lack of snow when I visited in February of my senior year of high school, and managed to secure an academic scholarship and a position on the track and cross country teams.
I really came out of my shell that first year. I was one of the few people there, not from California, and it was interesting to be different, and make a whole new world of friends from completely different backgrounds than I.
Freshman year came and went, and once I found myself at my aunt and uncle’s in Hawaii that following summer. One day I went with some friends down to the small local beach in Hilo. Now, Hilo is not exactly the tourist hot spot that Hawai’i is known for. Despite being the second largest city in the State, the constant gloom, lack of beaches, and local Hawaiian grunge turns the average tourist away.
I was a bit surprised to hear two girls, about my age, speaking with English accents on the beach. I figured they would be good for an interesting conversation at least, and went to introduce myself. I learned they were on a round-the-world trip, and were coming through the Big Island in hopes of seeing Volcano National Park. They were staying at a small hostel outside of Hilo, and only rented bikes to get around town which really limited their ability to go out and explore the island.
I had never really gotten to know anyone from a different country before, so I was infatuated with every little detail they could tell me about life in their far off land of London. Something about how different they were, in this small isolated rock in the Pacific Ocean, really piqued my interest. I offered to drive them around the island for the next few days, I was starting to get bored after being there for a few weeks, and figured making some friends from London wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
The girls continued onto Oahu, and then to Australia on their round-the-world trip. I went back to my parents’ house on the East Coast for a few weeks before returning for another year in Chico, and received quite a collection of postcards from Australia, Thailand, India, Dubai, and Egypt. I had just met them in a place that I thought of as far away, and it was blowing my mind that they were circumnavigating the globe, while I continued on with my normal life.
I knew I had to visit London. I now had friends in one of the world’s greatest cities, and the curiosity of what it felt like to be there, in a different country, on a different continent, where everyone had accents occupied a lot of my thoughts. At that point in my life though, I was still quite dedicated to running, and I knew focusing on advancing my running career would not mix well with overseas travel. Not to mention, I was not too financially gifted, and a trip to Europe was not cheap. I would have to wait to take the leap.
The second year in Chico was much like the first, a constant social learning experience. I had now been on my own for almost two years, and I was still figuring out who I really was and what I really wanted to do. School was increasing in difficulty, I had a great year of running, and managed to party a bit as well.
The next summer, I secured a gig to be a camp counselor in Maine. I’d never been to Maine, and getting paid to play sports with rich Jewish kids from New York all summer didn’t sound like such a bad gig. Not to mention, my living expenses were covered. I shared a cabin with one other counselor and ten twelve year olds.
Being a camp counselor is just like the movies. There was a small village of cabins, athletic fields and dining halls tucked away in the lush Maine forest on a beautiful fresh water lake. Less than a mile down the road was a girls’ camp, which we joined for many of our activities. Together with my English bunk mate, we wrangled ten rambunctious twelve year-olds from all different backgrounds, locations, races, and religions for two 4 week sessions.
There were counselors from all over the USA, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the UK both at our camp and the girls’ camp down the road. As we cohabitated with a general lack of privacy and personal space, I made friends quickly. Now, we were just about at the edge of nowhere in Maine, so the activities were quite limited on our nights and days off at first. It wasn’t long though, till we became quite friendly with some of the girls down the road, and my buddy Seb began seeing a girl who was from a small town not far away. We began spending our days and nights off in her apartment in Farmington, Maine. We had some unforgettable, and wild experiences that summer, and better yet, I added to my entourage of friends around the globe. It was hard to leave that small microcosm in the woods.
I returned to California that fall with one of the healthiest bank accounts of my life to date, and more people to visit in the UK. Over my 5 week winter break, I planned to spend 3 weeks in the UK, after visiting my family in New York over Christmas. At that age, my parents were still paying for me to fly home for the holidays, effectively cutting the cost of my flight to London in half. My friend Seb, who is one of the craziest guys I’ve ever met, also invited me to come along with his university’s ski club for a week on their annual trip to the French Alps. I was a bit hesitant to drop the amount of money on a ski trip, but he promised “The craziest week of my life.”
That fall, my friend Ben told me that throughout his college career, he had been planning to go to Madrid to study abroad, and told me to go to our university’s study abroad office and look into doing it myself. Now, I had always thought of study abroad as something that only people with easier majors, and a lot of money did, so I went to an informational meeting and pretty much wrote off being able to do it myself.
After three months of counting down, winter break finally arrived. A few days after Christmas, my sister drove me down to New York City, as she would be spending New Year’s there, and dropped me off to catch my redeye to London. I could barely contain my excitement as I waited near the gate to board the plane, and indulged in more than my fair share of the free alcohol that Virgin Airlines offered to calm myself down.
I awoke the next morning as we were landing at Heathrow. After navigating the maze towards immigration, I obtained my first passport stamp, and immediately decided I wanted to collect as many of those as possible. How could such a small square of ink be so fascinating? I then made my way out towards the baggage claim, and found Claire, who I hadn’t seen in one and a half years.
They say nothing is ever as good as the first time you try it, and London was nothing short of spectacular. Sure, I enjoyed the typical tourist activities, but the sheer concept of being surrounded by people who thought of my home as a travel destination, who thought of this strange world as normal, forever changed my life. It was different than visiting another area of the USA, I was the foreigner, I was the one with the accent, I was different. Suddenly I didn’t feel like another average joe, I stood out.
The beauty of London is how immensely diverse the population is. Due to the immigration system within the European Economic Area (The European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), citizens of any European country can move freely within European Borders. London is the largest city in Europe, and with English being such a dominant language, many from all corners of Europe relocate to London to learn and practice English. (Unfortunately, this makes it extremely hard to gain a visa to the UK if you are not a citizen from an EEA country. I’ve been trying to get a work visa for two years now.) Every other person I would meet was from somewhere else. Everyone was genuinely fascinated with what I had to say about my home and culture, and I was equally interested in theirs.
I spent just over a week with Claire in London, where I experienced my first New Year’s abroad. We sat atop Primrose Hill near Regent’s Park with hundreds of intoxicated Londoners, drinking and watching the colorful fireworks burst in the cold London sky. Other onlookers on the hill lit hundreds of Chinese lanterns that floated off to fill in the gaps between the stars.
From London, we took the train to Manchester to spend a few days with Claire’s family. As international as London was, it was quite fun staying with an English family in their brick row house. We sat down to dinner every night, and I felt incredible satisfaction, having received such a warm welcome. During my stay in Manchester, The Ashes, a famous rugby matchup between the English and Australians was ongoing in Australia. Each night they would show the highlights on TV, and Claire’s brother would explain the game to me over a few beers.
Upon returning to London, I developed a serious case of strep throat. I was quite uncomfortable, but short of downing over the counter British medicine, or going back to the USA, there wasn’t much I could do, and I was not about to miss out on a non-refundable trip to France. I took a train to Reading, England to join my friend Seb. Once there, he informed me that each night of our ski trip would involve different themed party, including smurfs, farm animals, and anything but clothes. We took to the shops of Reading to buy the necessary costumes while I constantly downed tea and sucked on Strepsils.
That night, we boarded a bus to Les Arcs, France. We left in the evening, since it was nearly a 24 hour drive, so we would arrive at the resort around the same time the next day. We made our way to the Port of Dover, as Seb introduced me as “The American.” At the port, Seb and the lads informed me about a tradition called “Port at the Port.” The idea was to buy a bottle of Port at the Duty Free shop on the ferry, and consume it by the time we arrived in the Port of Calais in France. Imagine hundreds of British university students and one American overtaking a ferry with a bottle of Port in hand. Any social barriers that I might have felt were knocked down and the booze filled ferry ride quickly set the tone for the entire week.
The bottle of Port was enough to numb my throat and knock me out for a few hours once we got back on the bus. I awoke the next morning in throbbing pain as our bus came to a halt on the side of a French Highway just after sunrise. It was a Sunday, and our bus had broken down. As it turns out, it is near impossible to get a French Mechanic out in the countryside on a Sunday, and it took us till sunset to get rolling again. We finally arrived at our resort round 3 am, and in typical English fashion, began drinking.
I shared a room with Seb and three of his friends. The trip quickly became a routine of skiing until dark, meeting back at the room for dinner, getting significantly drunk while donning that evening’s costume, and partying till you came home with a girl, or the clubs shut down. We would wake up each morning with an excruciating hangover, only to do it all again. I had immense success with the ladies, being the token foreigner, and the different costumes provided for some extra excitement. For the night themed ‘anything but clothes,’ Seb suggested we wear tape, and only tape. Applying it on our bear skin was easy enough, but you can imagine the discomfort when a girl had to tear it off back in the hotel room a few hours later. The week was above and beyond any party I had ever, or could ever experience back home.
After a few days back in London, I boarded the plane home. It had been a short visit, but I had jam packed so much into each day. I drowned my depression of leaving my adventures behind with red wine on the flight home. Suddenly my motivations had changed, I no longer wanted to graduate from Chico, get a nice job, buy a house and settle down. The thought of that depressed me, and I was eager to figure out how to get more of this drug called travel.
We touched down in New York and I immediately called my friend Ben. I blurted out something to the effect of “Dude! Send me the information for study abroad!” He was excited about my enthusiasm, and that I had finally come around to the whole idea, but informed me that the paperwork had to be submitted by February 1. It was January 26, and I was not even back in California yet. I’ll be dammed if I didn’t spend every waking minute until February 1 assembling my application, writing essays, and rushing professors to compose letters of recommendation. We were told we would be informed by the California State University International Program sometime in March about our results.
One Friday evening in mid-March 2011, I had a 5000m race scheduled at our home track invitational. I came home from classes that day with the intention of taking a short nap, and then running a few quick miles to loosen my legs up. I went down for a 30 minute nap, and awoke to a barrage of missed calls and texts from Ben, all to the effect of “I JUST GOT ACCEPTED TO GO TO SPAIN!” Suddenly, my race didn’t matter and the butterflies filled my stomach as I scurried out to my mailbox.
There it was, an envelope from the CSU International Programs office. I trembled as I tore the top open and scanned the enclosed page. I could barely speak straight as I ran inside to exclaim that I had just been accepted to a year at Kingston University in London. That night, fueled by my excitement, I ran a 14 second personal best in the 5000m, though my competitive running career would come to an end after that season.
I jumped through a lot of hoops the next few months, arranging visas, securing housing, selecting classes, and worrying about finances, but the stage was set. September 12, 2011 could not come fast enough.
MAROONED 