Priorities: Travel

All photos are from our first trip together in 2007.

I was hit with the travel bug in 2003 when I traveled to Ghana for the first time. It was also my first time being on a plane. I remember when I stepped out of the plane unto the orange, reddish soil feeling quite amazed. I could not believe I had flown to Africa. That trip was surely a learning experience and I learned so much about life and myself on that trip. I also remember feeling an immense sense of gratitude for my parents but that’s for an entirely different post.

My next international trip after that was to Aruba for ten days when I was a junior in college.
And that was it. After that trip, I was determined to travel.

Of course, one can’t just travel. One often needs a little money to travel and so I would save the little I could while in college and would do spring breaks with my girlfriends to places like Panama City and Daytona Beach.

When I was a senior in college, I went to San Diego and fell in love and was sure I was moving (plans were made!) there after I graduated but that did not happen and let me tell you how grateful I am for that.

After I graduated college, I was poor, oh so poor. I recall a nutritious diet of ramen noodles and I refused to ask my parents for any money as I was an adult now. I had student loans and grown up bills to pay for the first time in my life which left me with very little money for travel. So it was placed on the backburner and I did not go anywhere.

Several years later, I met Sean (again) and within six months of dating we decided that we wanted to take our first trip together. We decided on good ole South Beach. We booked our flights and our hotel and went to South Beach for five days with only $400.00 of spending money. Guys, we did that trip on $400.00!! To this day, we are not entirely sure how we did it and I wish I could go back and write it all down because wow, South Beach is pricey! SO impressed with young Faith and Sean ;).

We were so excited to be on a plane together :)

But we had the best time. We traveled simply but it was what did it and soon we were trying to take at least one trip per year.

Things have changed quite a bit since then and we try to travel as much as we can especially due to the fact that we do not have children. We have to be smart with how we take our trips as we both work full-time in corporate America but we still make it work as it is a big priority for us to travel as much as we can.

We have a bucket list of places we want to visit and I’m grateful that we’ll be getting a major one checked off this year. But we still need to go to Ghana (together), Ireland, Italy, Japan, Cuba, Greece and a lot more. We also have some cities here at home that we’ll like to visit like Houston, Charleston, Denver, Portland and I’m sure a few more.

Once we realized how much traveling together made us happy we decided that it was something that needed to be a priority in our relationship. We created a travel fund and have not looked back.

I love being able to see that the world is big and that I’m just a tiny part of it. I want to try all sorts of foods, I want to immerse myself in cultures and talk with the locals. I want to be able to experience as much of the world as I can while I’m alive.

And it all began with a spending amount of $400.00 for five days.