The Grand Departure
The Grand Departure
The Grand Departure – this was Susie's title for this picture taken at the Newport News/Williamsburg airport yesterday.
I know for the both of us, we have been slammed with everything in the world to do before leaving on this trip. Susie had papers to grade and a semester to close out as well as a family wedding to attend in the western part of the state the week before departure. I had a self-defense class to finish out, the house to get in order for being gone a month, and finishing making museum, train, bus, and accommodations reservations for the next month of travel. (It turns out that you can save money booking trains and buses in advance in England!) Plus, Susie and I will be starting yoga teacher training when we get back and have taken some classes to make up for the ones we will miss when we're gone.
But today, all that is behind us.
I love the first day of a trip, any trip. It's as if my life is now a clean slate. I am now not just Julie Greene of Hampton, Virginia.. mom, wife, self-defense instructor, cook and housekeeper. Nope, now I'm Julie Greene, world citizen. My travel self is larger than my Hampton self – my consciousness is expanded. I feel more alive. I am part of a bigger system, important somehow, but I don't know exactly why. Each journey gets me a little closer to finding it out.
The Grand Departure does not just describe our bodies boarding a plane, it is a Departure from the normal, the routine, the expected. We are different people when we're away from home. Some of us are worse, some of us are better. Me, I'm always, always better.
Ahhh... the comfort of the USAirways Club lounge
Chicken noodle soup and olives - with a view
Waking up to sunrise over Germany
Breakfast on the plane
We get free coffee and 30 minutes of internet while we wait for our flight to Naples
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Practicing Travel 
I am going to enjoy keeping up with your adventures! I love how you explain how travel makes you feel like a bigger self and citizen of the world, with an expanded consciousness and more fully alive. It is how I feel to and I feel actually more myself, not limited to the roles and duties I keep at home, my heart mind and soul are released of that and open to everything i encounter. I try to take this with me when I get home. I am getting better at holding onto the growth that happens and try to contemplater the expeience and revel in it a bit longer. Bon Voyage, Kathryn (Camino/California)
May 16, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Thanks, Kathryn!
I love your explanation… More Myself… great words to describe what happens. Yes, I try to keep it going when I’m at home and souvenirs help: that pair of earrings I got in Paris, the bag I just got in Naples, my shell necklace from my Camino friend, material reminders of a “more myself” experience!
May 17, 2013 at 9:35 am