One Ticket to Adventure!

Katie D.

May 21, 2011 - 9:00 PM

One month from today, I will be arriving in Central America for my summer of reasearch, internship, travel, and adventure! That's right, folks, I bought my ticket. The plans are set and I am so, so ready to go.

Because of a quirk in flight prices, I am adding some extra adventure to an already exciting summer. I'll be living and working in Tegucigalpa for the summer, but I will be flying into San Juan, Costa Rica on June 21st. It was either a fifteen-hour layover in the Huston airport, or a side trip to Costa Rica. Bring it on! I'll spend a couple of days in Costa Rica before taking a bus to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, where I will also spend a couple of days (if all goes well) and then take another bus to Tegucigalpa. I'll then settle down to work and living in Honduras for two months of the summer.

I could not be more happy about these travel plans. I have the travel bug. Itchy feet. The insatiable need to travel and see new places. I have been enormously blessed in my past travels and current opportunities: I am always in motion, it seems (I am writing tonight from a retreat center near Mount Vernon, Washington--but more on this next week). However, I have not traveled anywhere truly exciting since I returned from my study abroad in Valdivia, Chile three years ago. (Long time readers will remember my very first blog, written about my week-long trip to Peru during my time studying abroad: http://www.isupportuoregon.org/my_duckstory/blog/katie_d/one_ticket_to_peru)

As I think about it, perhaps I am misrepresenting these past three years. Since Chile, I have visited Philadelphia twice; Vancouver, British Columbia; the California Redwoods; and the border region of Arizona and Mexico. I haven't exactly been a homebody.

And yet...I miss the thrill of an international adventure. I miss Latin America. I can't wait to see the jungles of Costa Rica, to snorkel in the Caribbean waters, to birdwatch in some of the most bio-diverse regions of the world, and to get down to witnessing the daily lives of folks who are in a very different context than my everyday experience. I loved riding the buses during my Guatemala trip in 2007--packed in with dozens of folks in a brightly-painted American school bus, careening through the mountains and surrounded by the voices and bodies of the people around me. There is such an odd sense in being a foreigner in those situations: in some ways I stuck out boldly and embodied my American identity without ever opening my mouth. In other ways, I was invisible and anonymous outside of my own context.

So anyway, my summer plans. First Costa Rica and some short-term adventures, then on to Nicaragua for a spin around the capital, and on to Tegucigalpa for two months. The trip from Costa Rica to Honduras will cost $61, so hopefully I'll be able to set off on several short-term adventures within my larger experience in Tegucigalpa.

At the end of August, I'll pack up and say goodbye to Honduras, and head to Denver by way of El Salvador. I'll see another small corner of a complex region even as I'm leaving for home.

I have decided to continue blogging this summer. So you can look forward to another month of regular, school year blogs, which will include my leave-taking of this house (so sad!) and the end of the academic year. I'll also be writing about my developing thesis plans, my spring adventures, and the specific plans for the summer in Honduras. From mid-June until the end of August, I hope to blog regularly about my internship, research, and travels. I'll want to share my day-to-day life on the road, as well as stories of the people I meet and the places I visit. I hope to continue to blog twice a week during this time, but we'll see! A month from today, everything changes. I can't wait to share it with you!