The first experience I had solo traveling was when I decided to study abroad in Australia for a

year. And the reason I count this as my first solo travel experience is because while my entire

junior college class was going to Florence, Italy, that was like the place everyone decided to go

for study abroad from my school. Very popular study abroad spot. And there's nothing wrong with

that. I'm Italian. I should have done Florence and I was kicking myself later, you'll find out why.

But you know, I decided to take a leap of faith. I pride myself on being unique and unconventional

and different. And I was just stubborn, I guess, and wanted to do something different from everyone

else. I didn't want to go to Florence because everyone I knew was going there. So I decided to go

somewhere where no one else was going. Not one other person I knew for my school was going to Melbourne,

Australia. So naturally, I was a bit intimidated and nervous and I was 19, so I was very young. But

I wanted to take a big risk for some idiotic reason and go by myself. So it was really my first solo

travel experience. I don't remember being that scared. I think when you're young, you have

less fear. You know less, so you have less fears about what could go wrong. And for me, I was just like,

let's do this. I'm ready to experience a country on the opposite side of the world. Let's just go

to Australia and see what happens. I never did any intensive research going into it. That was my

first huge mistake. There was no Instagram. There was no social media. There was no TikTok to

base things off of. It was like, you Google things. That's the best you could do. So I just Google

shit. I saw some nice beaches. And I was like, all right, I'm in. Let's go to Australia.

And I end up arranging this entire study abroad trip by myself. Keep in mind, I have never been

really outside of the US. Like I've gone on family vacations. I've done many trips. I've gone to

Florida. I've gone to California. But I never did an international trip like this before in my

life. So I'm just trying to plan everything completely on my own because I'm a stubborn fuck.

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