My Lifelong Dream
It is that time of year when I can honestly say, the urge to travel is great. I love to travel and whenever my budget and time allows, I take off to some faraway land to rest and relax. If only I could travel all the time, even for a living, I would. I can still remember, as a teenager, I would make lists, day after day, of places I wanted to visit in different continents around the world.
I have yet to visit the over 100 countries I had written and planned to see then but I cannot complain. I have had my share of travels and having been to 80 of The Century Club (TCC) countries to date has been truly a blessing. I do continue to travel and I just cannot wait to I reach my goal. That would be the day!
This was taken in 1987 during my two week Christmas break in Barcelona. It was my first time to be away from home. I was beyond thrilled to be living in Madrid at that time doing my graduate studies in Spanish language and culture as a scholar of the Spanish government.
Just like millions of people around the world, I dreamed of going to America as a child. Even then, I knew this country was where I wanted to live in. As luck would have it, the US was not going to be the country I would end up visiting first.
I fell in love with Spanish and due to my fondness for the language, I received a marvelous scholarship to study and live in Spain. During my second Christmas away from home, I boarded a bus in Madrid and traveled 24 hours by land to reach Paris in France. It was only on my third year away from Manila did I finally get to visit the US where I met up with my mom and sisters in San Francisco for the holidays in 1989. The experience was so sweet and unforgettable, I cried on the flight back to Madrid. I truly did not want to go back to Europe. I was right from the very beginning. The US was it for me.