The Insatiable Itch

I have the travel itch, bad. It's almost overwhelming. Unfortunately, I'm broke.

The other problem with "the itch" is that the more I travel, the more I get hooked. I used to be able to go years without travel, and be fine.

The travel bug was instilled in me early. My family is not at all wealthy, but we spend our extra money on travel. We don't have cable, internet access, and we buy all our clothes from sale racks (The most expensive piece of clothing I have ever owned was my sixty dollar prom dress). However, we do believe in travel. All of the four children in our family have passports.

At five years old, I went to England and Scotland with my family. This is where it all started. After this first big trip, the addiction had only started to form.

There were a few trips during this time period, all in the states. There were a few places in the Midwest, Colorado, Oregon, Mississippi, and Georgia.

Four years ago I went to Ireland. Beautiful, gorgeous, la-ti-dah.

The itch got worse. Before the trip, I had been able to casually dream about traveling without any strange reactions. However, after that trip, I couldn't daydream without rushing to a travel site and trying to find a reasonable price.

One-and-a-half years went by with only a trip to D.C., which I was forced to go on. It was a group trip (vomit) with a group I despised (double vomit). I am, fortunately, no longer involved with that group. It was the worst trip of my life, but it helped sooth the itch for a few weeks.

Then the itch came back with a vengeance.

I started browsing different travel websites the way most people browse Facebook. I made a running list of places I want to go (which is a subject for another post, the list is close to reaching 100).

Then I studied abroad. In Ghana. For those of you who don't know where it is (and here in the rural midwest, it's a huge amount that don't know), Ghana is in west Africa.

Now, it has been four months since I got back, and I'm dying to travel again. I have only been back for four months, and I'm desperate to get out of the Midwest. I have a trip to North Carolina planned for early June, but that's not enough and not soon enough. It will be great fun, but this addiction now requires regular international travel to exotic places.

As I have no money to feed the compulsion to travel, I am stuck until I can save up enough to travel. I have one year until I graduate. Then I'll get a real job. I can live cheap, but it will probably be at least three years until I can save up enough vacation time and money to take a vacation like the kind I've been craving. That's three years. Three! At least!

Aaaaaaaahhh!