Most of the people in my life were not surprised to hear that, after spending the last 5 years of my life traveling around the country and working various outdoor guiding jobs, I was thinking about taking my adventures abroad in the near future. For the last year or so I have had my sights set on New Zealand, but the actual idea of moving my life away to about as far away as you can get from the U.S. seemed like a pretty daunting task. I've had too many things worrying me and stressing me here to really be able to start working through the details. I was still working on finishing my bachelor's degree, dealing with a pretty whacky roommate situation, and I was tying up the loose ends of a relationship that got dragged on for way too long. All of that coupled with multiple jobs at a time and a puppy to take care of made New Zealand seem like a distant dream. I have several friends over there already, but I just wasn't ready to go it alone and the timing just wasn't right until I could settle things down here. This time last year I made your standard New Year's Resolution to lose weight (and I lost 25 lbs, woo!), but I also decided to make myself a few promises. I wasn't going to allow myself to be miserable anymore, whether that be with jobs, people, or any life situations. I was not going to allow anything to continue that didn't serve my personal growth, and I wasn't going to get myself into stupid situations with people that are bad for me anymore. I spent most of last year and the beginning of this one really learning to love myself again, and it was the best thing I could have done for my adventurous spirit.  I spent last New Years dancing my face off and getting stoked for what lay ahead in 2014.

Fast forward to a snowy night at the end of January. I was at the Westword Whiteout Fashion Show knocking back tequila shots with friends from fashion school and enjoying checking out our competition in Denver's little up-and-coming fashion scene. When the event came to an end, we naturally decided we wanted to go drink beers and play Pac-Man at the barcade down the street, 2-up. We couldn't get an Uber, cab, or Lyft to save our lives, so we ventured down to the bus stop in hopes of trying to figure out public transportation for the first time. Neither of us had ever rode an RTD bus before, and upon hopping on and scrambling through our wallets, we realized neither of us had any cash. My friend had the most #whitegirlproblems moment ever and politely turned to the bus driver and asked, "Do you take credit?" *Face palm*

The whole bus was full of a wide variety of people that all hated us at that moment. The bus driver shook his head in disgust, gritted his teeth, and said "JUST GO SIT DOWN." 

We made our way down Colfax to 2-up, apologized to the angry bus driver, hopped off the bus, and settled inside with a beer. I'm not going to lie, we were feeling pretty good at this point. Long story short, this is where Dan enters the scene. I clumsily spilled a drink on him and the rest is history. We quickly found out we had really weird things in common like he also had his own clothing line, owned a snake (mine was bigger though ;-p), both loved Star Wars and Ninja Turtles (but who doesn't?) and he really wanted to do some international traveling very soon too. 

This year ended up being even worse than last year when it comes to unexpected life events and obstacles, but I'm pretty sure the universe sent me Dan to make sure I got through it all. We've been planning to take off on our international adventure for awhile now, but the pieces are just now falling into place. If you're wondering how we did it...I'll just say thank you to Capital One Venture Cards and bartending my brains out every night. We plan on buying a van once we get over the pond and renovating it so it can become our new traveling home. 

So essentially, our life will look pretty much like this soon: