Where have I been? So many places.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on Jun 13, 2016 at 4:25pm PDT

As I sit writing this, I'm in Dallas sipping a hot cup of coffee and listening to David Ramirez. I've been a lot of places in the past month and a half. Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, Louisville, Phoenix, Ecuador, Prescott...and soon I'll be trading Dallas, Texas for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It's been a whirlwind of a summer thus far, and everyone has been asking me "how do you travel so much?" or "wow! Why so much traveling?"

Sky Harbor feels like home.

Only one of these trips was in my plans before April 25th, and that plan was Ecuador. Even then, I only ended up on the Ecuador mission trip I just returned from because I was unable to go last August. All of these trips have otherwise been planned in the past month and a half.

When I found out I was accepted to Teach for America, I made plans to go to Chicago to help Jackie move home from Phoenix before moving to NYC. I had money saved up to go to Iceland in the fall, but as a teacher, I won't have the ability to take two weeks off of work to go and do that.

So I chose to help a friend move, and then I took advantage of the fact that I was on the opposite side of the country (Illinois) and decided to use that trip to spend some time on a train and some time visiting a few other friends who had offered to host me.

To Denver

I had plans to return to Phoenix after Denver and Salt Lake City, but I found out my great uncle had metastasized cancer while in Denver. My parents made plans to drive to Kentucky to say their goodbyes, and I changed my end-of-trip flight from Phoenix to Louisville.

I stayed in Louisville for about a week with my parents, and we spent most of it with my great aunt and great uncle, sitting, talking, and watching tv game shows.

While I was road-weary and just wanted to be home, I'm glad I took the time to go to Kentucky and visit him because he passed away while I was in Ecuador.

I'm sad that he passed away--he was like a grandfather to me--but I know his death was painless and clouded in elderly dementia. He had forgotten he had cancer, and often times would forget within the same day that we had visited him earlier in the day. He lived a long life, passed away peacefully in his sleep, and I'm grateful I was able to see him one last time.

Soon after returning from Kentucky, I turned around and went to Ecuador on a mission trip (I'm talking more about that in a travel blog post). After Ecuador, I was in Phoenix for a whopping four days and then I boarded a plane to Dallas, where I currently am.

Dallas is my last chance to experience a bit of peace and rest before I start an intense five week training program with Teach for America in Tulsa, so I'm reveling in this last bit of real vacation. If you need me, you can find me by the pool or eating tacos with Hannah.

And there you have it--I've traveled some 15,000 miles in the past five weeks or so. While I love traveling and visiting my friends, I'm eagerly awaiting July 23 when I return to Phoenix (for good) so I can spend more than four days with my cat, cousin, parents, friends and favorite coffee shops. For now, I've got five weeks of living in a brand new city up ahead of me.

What now?

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit." Edward Abbey explains why I feel most alive when I'm out there in the trees.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on May 2, 2016 at 11:38am PDT

Holy schneikes. I'm embarking on the final week at my job and realizing what is ahead of me.

This summer is going to be crazy.

For starters, I'm going to spend a month in Tulsa for the Teach for America summer institute. I'm going to be spending a week in Ecuador on a mission trip. I'm going to spend nearly two weeks on a Midwest train trip. And, to cap it all off, I have to take a huge standardized test and complete a 45-hour online course before the end of May.

I will be home, at my apartment in Phoenix, for three weeks total in the next three months. That's really hard for me to process. I'm not a homebody, per se, but I like having a physical location to come back to and drop things off at.

On the other hand, I've spent time traveling and housesitting and living out of a backpack, so this is nothing new--it's just something I didn't expect myself to be doing so much of this summer.

The more I think about it, my apprehension and anxiousness is replaced by curiosity and excitement.

In six months from now, I will have grown so much I'll probably be an entirely different person.

• I will have lived in a city where I don't know a single soul (albeit only for a month and a week).
• I will have gone through an effective yet condensed training program and placed in a classroom as a teaching intern. 
• I will (hopefully) have been accepted to and started grad school at ASU. 
• I will have stopped draining my savings and relying on my credit card and finally will have a paycheck after going all summer without one. 

And yet, I'm still asking myself...

What am I doing?

I don't know.

But it's certainly going to be a grand adventure.