Spring Break

Spring break! Every university student has this ideal image that spring break must be one giant party. While that sounds appealing, my sophomore year at university I decided to do something a little out of the ordinary. Charlie Jones and I decided to take our adventures abroad.

First stop: The UK! Charlie has a very international family, so he has family scattered all over the world. He first took me to this small town called Gloucestershire. This is where his grandpa lived. To give you an idea of what this man looks like, picture the grandpa from the movie Up. He was in his 90s when we came to visit and with his energy, he could have been in his 30s. For the first part of our European tour, he acted as tour guide.

The town of Gloucestershire is very quaint, all the homes are narrow and close to each other and the people and cars seem so much smaller! There are many pubs all over the town, so Charlie’s grandpa took us to his favorite one! The food in pubs often consists of potatoes and meat, who can complain about that!

One day, Rolland (Charlie’s grandpa) drove us around several small towns surrounding Gloucestershire. For a 90 year old man to be driving us around, I did not expect him to be such a crazy driver! He took us to small older towns where the architecture was so beautiful and historic. He had a story for anything and everything! We went inside several churches and they were all so beautiful! To end our day of driving and touring and chatting, Rolland took us to a small tea shop. I never knew people could be so passionate about tea until I met the Jones family. Tea time was the highlight of Rolland’s day, just as it seems to be for his daughter (Charlie’s mother).

Gloucestershire was a beautiful town, Rolland loved that little town and I can’t wait till the day I get to return! Recently, Rolland has sadly passed so I am so lucky to have been able to meet him before that unfortunate time. Touring around smaller towns in England is one of the fondest memories I have with going abroad, and we have Charlie’s grandpa to thank for those memories! Rolland showed me a whole new side of England which made me fall even more in love with Europe.

Where it All Began

Traveling is something I never really saw myself doing. I grew up in a conservative Christian home and always went to small private schools. It was as if I had grown up in a small bubble and wasn’t even aware of the beauties outside of my home in Colorado. Colorado is one of the most beautiful places a person can grow up in within the states, but when the time approached to start looking at universities, I knew that I needed to pop the bubble that I had been in for 18 years.

This is when I came upon High Point University; I have family in North Carolina so even though it was far from home there was at least some sense of comfort here. I had finally gotten out of my routine for the past 18 years and realized how naive I had been about how the rest of the world functioned. Freshman year of university is when I discovered I had an adventurous spirit.

This is when I met Charlie Jones, one of the most interesting people I have ever known. When people ask me where he is from I can’t even come up with an answer because he has lived in so many different countries. In fact, recently he traveled to eight different countries within two months time. He was like an alien to me, I had never met anyone who had seen so much of the world. He inspired me to explore this beautiful world in front of me.

Throughout my four years of university, I have now traveled to six different countries. I have fallen in love with traveling and experiencing different cultures and people. I am lucky enough to have grown up with a father who is a pilot, which in turn makes my traveling far less expensive. I have up until I am 26 to fly under my fathers employee status, and I plan to take full advantage of these next four years of traveling.