Travelaholics Anonymous...My Road to Addiction

If addicts to traveling had a support group, Travelaholics Anonymous, I would definitely be a member...maybe even the president. I love to travel and always have. The road to addiction started young. I was 13 and my cousin Lucy was finishing her mission in Australia. My Aunt Ellen was planning on going to Australia to pick up Lucy. I felt that my aunt "needed" someone to go with her. Somehow I convinced my parents to let me go. I probably had to do dishes for months or something...or just bug them enough until they said yes. I was probably a pretty annoying kid. Anyway, my mom and Grandma Fern ended up going too so there were 4 of us. We flew into Sydney, spent a few days there and then drove to Adelaide. We picked up my cousin and spent the rest of the time in the Adelaide area. I got to meet my Australian pen pal Brooke Williams and spend some time with her. It was a wonderful trip. From then on I knew I was meant to travel and an addiction was born. I was probably predisposed to my addiction but I just had to have a little sip to know I was really hooked. Unfortunately a few years passed before I was able to use my passport again. I went to Canada with my family, but you didn't need a passport at the time to go there. Right after I graduated from high school in 1997 my friend Cindy and I somehow convinced our parents to let us go visit my friend Rhona, an exchange student from Scotland. We went with the Bryson sisters...the people Rhona lived with when she was in Idaho. We spent 3 weeks in the British Isles...about a week in England and Wales, a week in Scotland, and a week in Northern Ireland and Ireland. It was my first real time away from home and I was pretty homesick at first but I got over it and had a fabulous time. My favorite was camping in Ireland...what a fun experience! In the Spring of 1999 I went to BYU Jerusalem for a term. It was absolutely one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I wish I could have stayed there for a year. It wasn't really too dangerous. I was there during a pretty peaceful time. We were able to go to all of the sites without any major problems. I did get spit on in the face, I guess for being an American...SORRY! And my friend Jill was so close to a shooting that she had blood splattered on her shirt. But, in the end nobody got hurt or killed and it was an awesome experience. I hope to have the opportunity to go back someday. It was such a great mix of fun, spiritual experiences, and cultural experiences. I learned so much...I just wish I could remember more of what I learned. We traveled all over in Israel...from the Dead Sea to the Sea of Galilee. I have to say though that Jerusalem was my favorite. It is such an intriguing city. We also went to Jordan and Egypt...saw the ruins of Petra (on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), climbed Mount Sinai, snorkeled in the Red Sea, and went inside the Pyramids of Giza. We saw and did so much...it was amazing! In August of 2000 I took a break from "normal" life and served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For more info on the LDS church see http://www.mormon.org/ or http://www.lds.org/. I served as a missionary in the Argentina Mendoza Mission. Mendoza is a land of mountains and vineyards. It is incredibly beautiful there. The experience stretched me more than I had ever been stretched before. My comfort zone became non-existant. I worked when it was so hot I thought I'd die. I worked when it was so cold I felt comatose. I ate cow intestines. I pretended to like people's dogs. I walked miles every day to talk to strangers about the gospel of Jesus Christ. And with all of that I came to love the people there and came to better understand the love Jesus Christ has for all of us. Serving a mission was by far the absolutely most meaningful and beautiful year and a half of my life. In April of 2002, about a month after I got home from serving in Argentina, I was off to China and Hong Kong. My mom, Aunt Ellen, Grandma Fern and my cousin Audrey and I went with our Chinese friends Brother Wai, his son Benjamin and their friend Jessie. We went to Shanghai, Bejing, Xian, Guilin and then to Hong Kong. It was a great trip...we got to climb on the Great Wall of China, see the Terracotta Soldiers, take a boat ride on the Li River, eat funky food (which is nothing like American Chinese food), and buy lots of cheap stuff like CD's, pearl earrings, cheap shoes that made our feet bleed, etc. In the summer of 2003 my friend Cindy and I went to Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico with BYU travel studies. I worked 3 part-time jobs that summer while attending summer school so I could pay for the trip...I was even a telemarketer person for a couple of weeks! Desperate? Yes. I was desperate to go on a trip and especially to get back to somewhere Spanish speaking. The trip was a blast. We had a busload of about 30 people, mostly college students and we went all over Central America. I especially loved driving through the jungle of Guatemala up to Tikal. We went to tons of Mayan ruins and focused our studies on the Book of Mormon. Almost everyone on the trip got sick though (with Montezuma's revenge)...there were only 3 that didn't...and I was one of those three! Thank you to swimming in the manure infested canals of Idaho as a child for my awesome immune system! The next April (2004) instead attending my graduation from BYU, I headed off to South America with one of my mission companions, Corinne. I figure you can always graduate from college but how many times do you have an opportunity to go on a trip to South America? We mostly went back to visit people we knew while serving as missionaries in Argentina. I always wanted to go back...especially because I always told people in the mission that I would be back to visit and I wanted to be a woman of my word since so many missionaries say they will be back to visit and never go. We spent most of our time in our mission which included Mendoza, San Luis, and San Juan Argentina. It was so wonderful to see the people we knew when we were missionaries...and they remembered us! We headed east for a few days to Buenos Aires and then took the ferry from there to Uruguay to visit another one of my mission companions, Hermana Pertuso. On the way home we stopped off for a couple of days in Santiago, Chile just to see the sights. What a great trip! A few months later I was off to Peru. My friend, Cindy and I had talked about going to Peru for awhile, but unfortunately I lost Cindy to marriage before we could go. So I didn't have anyone to go to Peru with. A true traveler never gives up though, so I just went by myself with a group from Morris Murdock travel. I didn't know anyone else on the trip but I ended up having a fabulous time and meeting lots of great people. We spent most of our time in Cusco and the surrounding areas and Machu Picchu. Of course my favorite was Machu Picchu. I climed Wayna Picchu early one morning to get a great view of Machu Picchu. It was rainy and slippery that morning. The trail was pretty steep and I'm sure not too safe but it was a great hike and the views were worth it. The best moment of the trip was when one of the ladies in our tour group said to me, and I quote, "If you marry my son and put up with his crap I'll give you my house when I die." And that is no lie! In February of 2005 I had the opportunity to go to Guatemala with my Grandma and Grandpa Furness. My grandpa had been going to Guatemala for years and had a lot of friends there. I had always wanted to go with him and I finally had the opportunity to go. We visited his friends and saw several places in Guatemala. We went to Antigua and Lake Atitlan. We also went down to Esquintla and to the black sand beaches there. A lot of what we did centered around a couple of humanitarian projects that my grandpa was involved with...one with getting computers for schools in poor areas of Guatemala and another with an AIDS orphanage just outside of Guatemala City. Highlights were meeting all of my grandpa's friends, riding with the Botrans (uber-rich Guatemalans) in their bullet-proof suburban convoy with 6 body guards, and visiting the schools that received computers. It was a great experience. I so glad we went when we did because my grandpa died just 2 months after we returned. I have such great memories with my grandparents in Guatemala. In 2005 I headed to Europe with an old friend from high school, Corrine. We went to England, Holland, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. We backpacked. Well, we high-maintenance backpacked Europe. Basically, we put all of our stuff in big backpacks so it would be easier to maneuver train and subway stations. We didn't grunge it though. We only stayed in one hostel and it was a Christian Youth Hostel with private rooms. The rest of the nights we stayed in pensions or hotels. We had a ton of fun. We discovered that the hottest men in the world live in Holland, particularly Haarlem, Holland. Unfortunately they didn't give us the time of day though. Instead I got attention from a Turkish man in Munich and Corrine got attention from a 19 year old in Prague! OK, if you are actually still reading this, leave me a comment and use the word "crazy" in the comment. This is taking forever but I'm getting closer to done. OK, maybe just half through. Anyway, the next February (2006) I went back to Guatemala with my Grandma Furness. We had such a great experience that we just had to go back. We spent most of the time with our friends in Guatemala City but we also went to Antigua and up to Coban. I hadn't yet been to Coban so that was probably my favorite part, although our friend Jose Manuel who was driving is the craziest driver I have ever been with. I was surprised when we made it back Guatemala City alive. Coban is where the true Mayan people still live. It is a beautiful area. It is very lush and green. We had a fun drive listening to my IPod in the car. Jose Manuel was having fun making requests and seeing if I would have the music he wanted to listen to. I love Guatemala...it is the foreign country I have visited the most. The people there are just so wonderful and so much fun...and the country is beautiful and full of history. In May of 2006 my friends Kate, Sarah, and I went to Thailand. We got inspired to go to Thailand from watching the second Bridget Jones' Diary movie (edited of course). So we called it the "Bridget Jones' Thailand Tour 2006." We even made matching t-shirts. We had a blast. We spent time up north in Chaing Mai. We got to ride elephants and see the stretch neck people of Thailand and some of the other Hill Tribes. Then we went down to Phuket where we enjoyed snorkeling, sunbathing (especially on Phi Phi Island) and trying to secretly take pictures of Caucasian men with their Thai prostitutes. We also took a boat ride in Phangnga Bay like Bridget and Hugh Grant did. It is such a beautiful place. We spent time in Bangkok and the surrounding areas like the ancient ruins of Ayuthaya. Bangkok at night is really fun. Kate and I stayed out nearly all night the night before we left just soaking in the sights and riding around in tuk tuks (little motorcycle taxis). Good times! That fall I talked my brother Lee into going to Eastern Europe with me since he served a mission in Ukraine. We stopped off in Paris just to see the main sites. I hadn't really ever been that interested in France, we just stopped because we were flying through there so we could do it as a stopover. I loved Paris though and now it is one of my favorite cities. After Paris we flew to Budapest, Hungary. We spent a couple of days just exploring the city there. It was so nice to travel with a guy...you feel so much safer and can stay out later at night and stuff. I need to find some guy travel friends. Anyway, from Budapest we took a night train, which is so much fun for those of you who have never done it, through Slovakia and up to Poland. We stopped in Slovakia in the middle of the night so these scary Slovakian guard guys could stamp our passports and try to make us think that they weren't going to let us continue on. Poland was awesome. My favorite was going to Auschwich. I am intrigued by Nazi death camps. The very best and the very worst in people is brought out in situations like that. From Poland we took a bus in the middle of the night to Lviv, Ukraine. It was a fun experience as it was definitely not a touristy way to travel. We spent time in Lviv, Lutsk, and Kiev, Ukraine seeing the sights and visiting people Lee knew as a missionary. It was a great trip. We packed in a lot. I hope I didn't turn Lee off to traveling as he is just a beginner and it was a pretty intense trip. We made a lot of great memories though. Even on our flight back home we had fun as a man sitting near us in the plane loudly complained to the flight attendant about a couple sitting in front of him by saying "I need to be moved, we have a MAJOR body odor issue here." He was right, the people really did stink like they hadn't showered since the fall of communism. Lee and I had a good laugh about the man's lack of tact though. The next January 2007 my mom and I headed to Mexico just to get away from the yucky January weather. I really don't like the month of January very much so it was just nice to get away to where the sun was shining. We went to Cabo San Lucas. My mom really wanted to go there for some reason. I'm not a very big fan of touristy Mexico but I really wanted to get away from Utah and go on a trip. It turned out to be a lot of fun. We just relaxed at the beach, went whale watching, and took a bus up to Todos Santos to the "Hotel California." I like traveling with my mom because she's not afraid to just hop on a local city bus with me and explore. She's pretty adventurous for an old person! Then just a little over a month later my mom and I went to France for the week. My mom had never been to Europe and I was ashamed. So, for Christmas I bought her tickets to a concert she had been wanting to go to in Paris so we couldn't back out. It was the second time I had been to Paris but I didn't have very much time there the first time so it was so fun to get to know the city. We took the subway and RER trains everywhere. We saw all of the main sites...from the Louvre, to Notre Dame to Versailles. I love the gardens of Versailles. They are amazing. In another life I want to come back as Marie Antoinette...except skip the having to be married to that wimp Louis XVI and the guillotine part. Anyway, it was a fun and relaxing week in Paris. It was the first time I had ever been to Europe and just stayed in one place. I'm used to rushing around from country to country. Anyway, I'm so glad my mom likes to travel (since no one else in my family really does) and that we have been able to take several trips together. Just a couple of weeks after getting back from France I was off with my friend Katie to Africa. We stopped off for a few days in Holland and Belgium and then went onto Ethiopia and then to Kenya. It was tulip season in Holland and I am a big fan of flowers. It was so beautiful. Highlights from Holland and Belgium were: the Hot Holland men, Belgian chocolate, almost getting arrested for sneaking onto a trolley car in Amsterdam, and getting kissed by a Belgian guy...on the lips!...it must be the French influence. I have a whole entry below about the Ethiopia/Kenya part, so read on! I'm so glad for all of the opportunities I have had to travel and see the world...to meet great people and come to know other cultures and ways of living life. So, this is how and why I am a travel addict. I don't ever plan on changing either. That's all. The end.