From Reading to Real Life

Location:
Dublin
Latitude/Longitude:
53.349805300000, -6.260309700000
Journal Entry:

When I was less than a year old, my parents took me to London, United Kingdom. Of course, I can’t remember anything from that first trip over the Atlantic Ocean, but my parents say that baby-me was thrilled to be in London. One day, I even entertained a full room of Londoners as I danced around our hotel lobby!

For the next eighteen years, I didn’t have the chance to travel much, but I found a different way of exploring the world: reading. Since I learned to read in kindergarten, I have always had my nose in a book. Reading was my way of bringing adventure to my own bedroom in suburban Newton, Massachusetts, enabling me to visit countries as far away as Japan and France and Russia. The stories and places I experienced through reading felt real, and they made my life so much more exciting. 

When I graduated from high school, my family hopped over the Atlantic again to visit Spain. This time, the travel bug stuck with me. A year later, I used some of the money I’d earned in part-time jobs to travel to Germany, Switzerland and France with a few friends. I loved this trip so much that I applied to study in Ireland during the fall of my junior year.

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