An Adventure of a Lifetime

15 hours on a airplane sounded pretty terrible…in fact I was pretty sure it would be terrible but I didn’t care because I knew waiting for me on the other side of that plane ride was the adventure of a lifetime. 7 cities, 4 countries and 10 amazing days touring Europe and playing the game I love with a group of people I called my second family. Nothing gets much better than that and not to sound too cheesy it was everything I imagined it would be.

Between Paris, Nice, Monaco, Lake Como, Florence, Rome, and the Vatican it’s almost too difficult to pick my favorite. Each place was beautiful, each place holds a piece of my heart, but I think my favorite place was probably Nice, France. Talk about beautiful, i’ve never seen water so blue!

The beach wasn’t sand it was rocks but the continuous waves had made them all as smooth as glass so it didn’t hurt to stand on them. The water was warm, the sun was out, and we floated in the Mediterranean like we didn’t have a care in the world. I think this was the first time that it really hit me how blessed we were to be on this trip and the first time I was able to soak all that in. After we got out of the water and dried off a little we noticed a man walking around selling watermelon. We decided to flag him down and see how much he was selling them for, he even cut off a piece and let us taste it before we bought one. I have literally never tasted watermelon so good before in my entire life. It was so sweet and juicy it just about melted in my mouth but it wasn’t soggy or grainy, it was perfect. They were also the biggest slices of watermelon I had ever seen! It was probably a quarter of the entire melon and my teammate and I had to stand next to each other to hold on to it and eat it. Juice poured down our chin and we just ate and laughed like we were little kids again, just happy to be in the sun eating a slice of watermelon.

Now months later I think back and reflect on all that experience really meant to me. It was more than sun, salt, and watermelon in Nice and more than the art, the culture, and the history in Florence. It was more than the pasta we ate in Italy or the view I saw from the Eiffel Tower.

It was literally an adventure of a lifetime, something most people only dream about and not only am I blessed to have experienced it, I would also say I’m a better person for it. I learned about culture and saw people that were different from me. I experienced what it was like to not have someone understand me and I experience what it was like to find understanding with someone who was different from me. I had the opportunity to stand in front of Michelangelo’s Pieta and be in awe of its beauty but also to understand how it influences the art I look at today and appreciate it’s place in history. I got to stand on the original streets of Rome and appreciate the people who might have walked them before me. My vision was extended, my heart was expanded, and my amazement at the world we live in was increased ten fold.

As a student athlete studying abroad for an entire is semester is something I can only experience by living vicariously through my friends’ Facebook feeds. With our schedule and seasons, workouts and team committments it’s just not possible, and even the summer is many times spent catching up or getting ahead on credits. This trip though, was a way that we could get a small taste of that experience and learn many of the same lessons as others do. I wasn’t a part of the fundraising for this trip but I’m eternally grateful for those who were because I know without it, none of this would have been possible. I have been blessed beyond measure by this opportunity and know that my life has been touched and changed for the better because of it.