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Hello to all the blog lovers, adventure seekers, teacher heroes, and fan readers back home. My name is Kaylee Sperling and I am so excited to share my journey teaching abroad in Thailand with all of you!
Picture this: It's your senior year of college, the last lap with your best friends and doing all the things you know so well and love so much. Everything seems to be in place because you're in the heat of the moment, but there's something missing. It's that answer to the question people keep throwing at you; the one you've refused to come up with because it's too hard to face. What are your plans after graduation? (You mean I really have to grow up?!) As the months creep by, more and more people around you seem to be making plans, and all you can do is shrug or change the subject. The business majors are being offered jobs at big firms in the city, the education majors have countless interviews lined up for full-time positions, the medical majors have all their grad school applications sent in, but what are you, with your little communication degree and big world of possibilites, going to do?
Well, it turns out, that big world of possibilities is just that. A big world. There's so much to see and there's no time like the present to start.
I am grateful to have grown up in a family that has encouraged travel all my life. Rather than week long trips to the beach in the summer, my parents had a thirst for what was beyond the Atlantic Ocean and took my sister and me to places only imagineable in our wildest dreams. I mean, c'mon, when you're in Italy at 12 years old, a country with heaps of gelato at every turn, how much closer to heaven can you get? These various trips sparked a passion in me for traveling that I never thought possible. My desire to explore the whole world, combined with my aversion to facing the real world, has led me, now 22 years old, to my twenty-first country.
While there were hundreds of excuses to stay at home and work in the comfort of New York, there were thousands of reasons to take that jump towards what I knew my heart really wanted to do. Packing up your life into three suitcases and saying goodbye to all of the people and things you love is hard, but do you ever really leave them? Tangibly, we have Facetime and photos to keep them close, but we also have our memories and their support to keep us going. I am so thankful to, and inspired by all of the indiviudals who helped me get to this place and encouraged my dreams. They are the reason why I wanted to start this blog. To inspire.
To inspire those like me, who feel lost in a world of possibilities; to take that jump and go after anything you want to achieve. The real world will always be waiting for you when you get back, but the time of no responsibilities will run out quickly, so seize every moment of it while it lasts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey." No quote has ever resonated with me more. I'm a college graduate and I still don't know my final destination. While this has always been something to cause me stress, I'm learning to accept it, and can see that it's okay; I don't have to know. All of my life experiences gained and lessons learned will lead me to it when I'm ready. But for now, I can't wait to see all of the places along my way.
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