And so it begins.

A journey of sorts. An adventure of wondrous magnitude! I'm leaving on a jet plane: Off to a new city, a new country, a new continent. Surrounded by a new language, a new culture, new food, new styles, new beer and new faces. Some 4959.7 miles, 7981.9 kilometers, or 4309.9 nautical miles from family- from home. Hallo, Salzburg, Austria!

I'm no stranger to distance. I've never had a problem with leaving home to see new places. Having already completed my first year of college some 1200 miles from home at the wonderful University of Portland taught me how independent I truly was. I was so fortunate to have begun my adventure as a young adult in such a place. Portland is such a musical city. There is this constant pulse that beats beneath the streets, energizing you with every step you take towards Voodoo Doughnuts or Powell's Books. This beat that resonates with the homeless people on the street corners and the hipsters with their iPhones. The green intoxicates you, almost making you forget the dreariness of the constant grey that seems to poison any happy thoughts you may possibly have. And the rain - oh, the rain. Portland and I? We have a complicated relationship. But the good days outnumber the bad - I met some truly incredibly people there - and for that, I am truly grateful.

I keep trying to figure out a way to convey my feelings towards leaving home. I'm excited. I'm ecstatic to begin my adventure. But, no matter how great a journey awaits you, there is always the soft tug of home that pulls at your heart strings and enters your daydreaming thoughts. The best way I can think to explain it comes from one of my favorite movies, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

"It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You'll realize what's changed is you." 

 I was raised to know that family is the most important part of my life. My parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and especially my nephew, mean the world to me. There is no feeling like the one you feel in the pit of your stomach walking off the plane to walk down the stairs to your family waiting in the baggage claim after a long time apart. Family is home. But my physical home is no longer where my childhood home rests. Coming up on my twentieth birthday, I've begun to feel the changing of my ways. I don't know where home is, but I know that I won't find it if I don't go looking for it. I'm not afraid to venture into the unknown. Of course I'm scared - I would be foolish not to be. But, aren't the wisest people those who enter every challenge with a little fear in their hearts? As Frederick Buechner says,

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time, you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach. Because you do not live in a world, but a world lives in you."

I'm ready to go out and discover the world for myself. To make judgments and decisions based on my own thoughts and morals, rather than the ones dictated to me from a set of prescribed rules and textbooks. I'm ready to make mistakes and forget my map and translate things wrong and get lost down a cobblestone road and have to communicate with strangers in a language I've never heard. I'm so eager to make those memories, and to write them - as well as capture them, here for you.

The name of my blog is entfalten. The word is German for "unfold" and comes from my favorite poem by a beloved poet of mine. Rainer Maria Rilke is an Austrian poet from the turn of the 20th century. Ironic that he is Austrian, yes? He also died in my favorite place in Europe - Montreaux, Switzerland. But, I digress. My favorite line within the poem is "Ich will mich entfalten" which translates to, "I want to unfold." Fitting, I think, for the place I have come to in my life. Over the next 9-10 months, I hope to unfold, even if just a little. I think it will be an awfully big adventure. The poem goes as follows:

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and yet not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don't want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, as translated by Robert Bly

Auf Wiedersehen! 
-Kelsey