My very first passport just expired. The woman at the passport office told me I'd have to turn over the first one and that made me really sad for some reason.  I remember this movie- I think it's called Only You- but the main girl always carried her passport around with her... just in case she wanted to leave at a moments notice or she found the man of her dreams and he whisked her away to an exotic land.  That was what I wanted- I have had a love affair with traveling for as long as I can remember but I didn't take my first trip out of the United States (Mexico doesn't really count) until 2001.  I'd always wanted to live in England and figured that should be my first trip. My friend Bonnie and I headed to London one rainy, cold spring break and I've never looked back.  Any extra money I had was set aside and any break I had from work, I was researching where I'd be going.  It's hard to believe that 10 years ago was the first time I'd ever left America and now I'm living in another country.  

There are so many memories on the pages of that passport....

Great trips with great friends... eating fish and chips with a Strongbow in my first English pub....getting lost and stranded without our luggage... figuring out one of your friends has had makeup the whole time you didn't have your luggage....seeing the Eiffel tower for the first time....navigating the crazy airports and trains... volcanic ash...spending a summer hanging out with teenagers and taking them to summer camp in Italy....Leslie singing on a train to Amsterdam....realizing my love for photography....having to take just one more thing out of my bag to get on that Ryan Air flight...landing in Dublin at midnight and trying to figure out the bus system with some locals....getting stranded in London after some airport scare...eating strange street food and things I probably don't even want to know what I was eating... praying that the hostel I booked will be as nice as the one in Edinburgh....spending a month in China teaching and traveling... having taxi drivers tell you that you are staying in a sketchy part of town.... arriving at the apartment in Rome where LB put Burt's Bees in every room for me...getting detained in Heathrow and questioned for hours

Ok- this is one thing I will not miss being in my passport.  I've been a little nervous to go back to England since then even though I know I have no reason to be and I most likely wouldn't be flying in through Heathrow anyway.  I'm headed to England the first chance I get!!

 Now have my nice, fresh, new passport (and I didn't even have to turn in my old one).  I don't know why that woman told me I would. And on plus side,I feel like I haven't aged much in 10 years and I kind of like this picture better anyway