Moving out

Booking a bunch of trips today has made me even more restless to travel, and I've been thinking that Saturday (Stratford! wooooo!) can come soon enough. Trying to decide where I want to go around the UK, let alone the continent, has been so difficult because there are so many places I could ship myself off to for a day or so just to have a look around. But I've also come to a realization as I make these plans: there are SOOO many places in the States that I have yet to see but am desperate to see. I think people here are so lucky that everything's close enough for them to get to if they want to; in the States, it's much harder to travel around, but, then again, we're used to long trips. It's really amusing to tell the Brit students that I go to Uni 16 hours away from my home in Atlanta; most of them can't even fathom traveling that far away for anything, let alone leaving home to go to school. Yet another difference between us and the Brits.

And further still, while I think the continent is SO close to the UK, many Brits I've talked consider it a whole other world. Now, I know the UK is much different from Europe, and Brits would never have you call them Europeans--I'm not talking about cultural differences. I'm merely speaking in terms of distance. I consider Europe to be so close to the UK, and thus I guess that's why I say it's so much easier to travel around here than in the US.

It really is a state of mind, though, as well. Like I said before, many Brits (at least ones I've talked to--not trying to make blanket generalizations here!) consider themselves and their country to be completely separated from the European continent, and therefore, though it may be close in reality, to them, it's far away. For me, the US is a very vast place, and when you travel to different states, you definitely find so many differences--not as you would in Europe (ie, nationality, language, customs, etc.), but differences nonetheless. And you can't just do a daytrip to Chicago, for instance, from Atlanta. Too far. But I travel around the States regardless of the distances, and still there are so many places I haven't been that I would love to visit back home. I think I may have to start planning trips much like those I'm planning right now...