I am currently sat in Heathrow Airport waiting for my gate to be announced so I can fly to Ecuador and begin a 5 month journey through 3 continents, 4 countries, 11 flights and lots of trips! I am extremely excited, but also scared as hell, so I thought this would be a good time to reflect before I travel halfway round the globe.
If you have read my blog before you may know that I recently spent almost 3 months volunteering in Uganda with Voluntary Service Overseas. It was an amazing experience (but not without its challenges) and I think in many ways it has helped make me more independent and prepared for this trip: I learnt to work by myself using my own initiative and dealing with challenging people; I was immersed in a completely different culture with a rich tapestry of music, dance and history, but also some views in opposition to my own; and I found out I really don’t need as many clothes as I thought (I have cut my bag down from 26kg for 3 months in Uganda to 15kg for 5 months in countries with widely varying climates! ).
Since returning to the UK (and a delicious cooked breakfast) I have worked several jobs to save up for this trip and made sure to spend lots of time with friends and family. I worked in a hip new shop in the centre of Brighton (feeling quite out of my depth as a girl who finds most of her clothes in charity shops and couldn’t give a fig what brand they are). I was offered the opportunity to be Early Years Person at a kid’s holiday camp which was an exciting new responsibility and I loved playing with the children and running their activities in the run-up to Christmas. Then I spent two weeks working in a fast food restaurant, which I found surprisingly enjoyable (despite the awful closing shift until midnight with a 12-hour shift at noon the following day!). The people were nice and I learnt how to use a till and be efficient in an extremely fast-paced environment. However, I couldn’t quite align myself with the ethos of the company and vast amount of waste it produces. But, having said that, it did allow me to earn the last bit of cash I needed to reach my budget target and I gained lots of new skills. Plus, I spent a lovely Christmas with my family, went to the cinema, cafés and clubs with my friends and spent lots of time slobbing round the house and watching Netflix.
All in all I guess what I’m trying to say is that whilst I do not feel prepared for 5 months of solo travel (attested to by the fact I was running around the house in a panic 10 minutes before I was meant to leave, trying to sort out all the last minute details), all the experiences I’ve had so far in my gap year have taught me a lot in retrospect and I look forward to this next step in the journey and seeing the person I become. I know that sounds like a cheesy “gap yar” way of saying I’ll “find myself”, which is a bit OTT, but I do think that having so many different experiences is making me more aware of my capabilities and limitations and showing me that I can do things by myself and achieve what I want.
So if any of this is interesting to you, (although I’d be surprised you’re reading this unless you’re one of my awesome friends or relatives checking up on my travels! But welcome and thanks) I am aiming to write a post every week or two so you can follow my journey. Hopefully my experiences may inspire you to go travelling too or at least let you see a little bit of what there is too offer in the big, wide world out there!
18th January 2019
Ella's blog 