Fresno
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2004
1
12
Trip End
Jun 15, 2005
Fresno, California
Saturday, February 7, 2009
A bit of background about myself. I'm a 25 year old Californian who has always loved to travel but was limited to the United States and Canada in my youth because of a combination of lack of money, lack of a passport, and a disinclination on the part of my parents to leave the country. My parents love to travel as well but they're firmly in the "see America first" school of thought. They've taken daytrips into Mexico and Canada and my Dad was stationed in Germany when he was in the Army but beyond that they've only traveled domestically. That being said until I was 18 every summer involved a two and a half month trip staying in their RV to visit relatives or just to travel, the most exciting of which happened in the summer after the fourth grade when we went from California up to Oregon, then across the northern tier of states to Maine, down the coast to North Carolina and back across the southern states, I'll eventually try to add a travelogue of my youthful trips with my parents but that will have to wait for now.
In college (UC Santa Cruz) I got a bit more independent travel experience but nothing too exciting, I mostly stayed in California except when visiting family in Oregon and Washington.
All that being said I'd been something of a xenophile since I was a kid, foreign cultures, foods, sights, music and languages all fascinated me and I dreamed of one day being able to see all the places talked about in the National Geographic, I never really thought I'd be able to because I was a poor kid relying on financial aid to be able to make it to college but I still had my dreams. One day in my junior year, on a whim, I decided to drop by the office of the University's Education Abroad Program and found out that as long as I did it through the UC EAP financial aid would cover pretty much all of the costs of studying abroad. "Hell yes," I said to myself and picked up the brochures for just about every country they had a program for. After careful consideration of my options (I wanted a country where English was not the native language because I wanted to try to learn a language so the UK, Australia, etc. were out; I needed a country where the language of instruction was English so France, Germany, Italy and the Spanish speaking countries were out; I didn't want my parents to get completely mortified at the prospect of potential danger so third world countries were out) I settled on Hungary, specifically Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyedgyetem in Budapest, which had the added bonus of allowing me to commit for only one semester, followed by either returning to the States if I didn't like it, staying on for another semester in Hungary, or moving on to a semester in Charles University in Prague. I went for the latter option. I got my passport, my visa (completely unnecessary as I would soon find out) and was off to spend my fourth year abroad in Europe.
