2010: The Year That My Passport Smiled So much, It's Face Hurt

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, this New Year's post has taken me forever to publish.

Since December 30th, I have tried to create the tender and emotional "2010: The Year that My Passport Smiled so much, it's face hurt" type of thing with pictures from each voyage.

Yet, it took me so g-damn long; I could never finish the post. Then days, later I realized a few things.

Firstly, for the most part, I DISLIKE those year in reviews post (except for my dear friend Kelsey Sykes' post. That one you need to check out.). It's like those episodes on TV where the writer's are on strike or fresh out of new ideas, so they allude to past episodes..or it's like, "Just to remind you, I have a really awesome life! So much more glamourous than yours...sucker!" (Maybe those are my insecurities talking).

Secondly, I realized that it is really f'in difficult to summarize a year in one post. 

Even harder, a year that I was sad to see go...a year that changed my life...where I accomplished two of my biggest life goals (live abroad, learn another language)...

where all the travel cliches/ post grade malaise/ quarter-life crises came true. Yes, many of my stupid insecurities were washed a way. Yes, I changed. Yes, I freaked out, having those times, where my place in life was rather ambiguous.

But for the most part, yeah, 2010 was pretty much the most life-changing year to date. 

Hmm...yeah, no big deal, really.

Then, lastly, I remembered that most of my loved ones had the shittiest of all shitty years. 

However, the shittiness of 2010 was not just shittiness in vain like it had been in the other years. No, it was really shitty shittiness that led to purification, to a renaissance for 2011. 

All those loved ones were SO happy to bring in the new year. So, I said Goodbye 2010, you said  HELLO 2011!  

And after I got over my little nostalgia of 2010 and woke up in 2011, I also felt this ambiance of 

hope and lightness.

BY GOLLY, it feels great to start fresh again and have so much hope for 2011. 

I feel in in the air. I can breath it in.

So, in the end, I decided, let those old photos be. Maybe I will publsh them later. Maybe I won't. For the moment, I'm moving forward and starting to take new photos of these upcoming voyages. 

So, in summary, 2010, I lurv you...kisses, hugs, postcards from above... you will forever hold a special, dire-life-changing-period of time in my heart. Peace.

But, 2011, you better get ready, because I'm gonna travel so much and attack the French language over the next few months like a bat out of hell... you don't even know what's coming. Yes, I will have my usual nosedives and my blinding pitfalls, but I'll have my buds and fam' helping me out of it. 

So, raise your glasses to that...

...and here's to 2011, the year of the rabbit: