How our best idea ever came to be
Lauren Townson was one of my very first friends at Whitworth. We met during wind symphony auditions our freshman year when Lauren forgot a pencil, and I just happened to have one. Lauren ended up being one of my closest friends at Whitworth as we were stand partners in wind symphony.
We’ve known we wanted to study abroad for a long time and we were waiting for our dream JanTerm trip for our senior year. But when registration rolled around, we found out the trip we wanted wasn’t being offered and none of the other trips were going places we really wanted to go. But then we had this crazy idea…
What if we just went to Europe without actually studying abroad?
We spent an entire afternoon researching a possible itinerary and soon found it would be a lot more affordable than we originally thought (good things come to those who plan over a year in advance).
We planned to visit Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Florence and Rome. We found airline tickets that were an amazing deal, so we went for it. We would spend the entire next year planning our dream study abroad sans actual studying.
But you don’t just go on an international trip with just any friend. Lauren and I knew we would be good travel partners because we were roommates during our trip to Thailand on our wind symphony tour our freshman year.
With graduation coming in the spring, we knew if we didn’t go during JanTerm, we might not get another opportunity to travel together for a really long time.
So this blog serves to document our trip so we can have something to look back on, and so loved ones can follow along (hi Mom and Dad!)
