How lucky are we!

As I mentioned in my last blog, this past week three of my friends and I have been traveling around Ireland for our senior year spring break. I’m writing this on the plane ride back to RDU after a 24-hour layover in Reykjavik, Iceland, feeling incredibly grateful and lucky for the last 9 days and sad that they flew by so fast.

When we left for this trip, three of us were on the same flight, but Madison Grajzar , flew separately, planning to meet us in Dublin around the same time. However, her travel day quickly went awry after her first flight to DC got delayed, causing her to miss her connection. That delay, and a slew of issues that just kept coming (including her bus to Galway getting hit by a truck), resulted in her not getting to Ireland until 3 pm the following day. Nothing is worse than bad travel days, especially when three of your friends are already at your destination drinking Guinness at the Guinness Factory.

However, the whole time she had the best attitude and positive mindset that the rest of us were in awe of. She probably told us that “perspective changes everything” 20 different times – and she was so right. Throughout the week this kind of became our mantra. Somehow, we started saying that we had “lucky girl syndrome” and anytime something good would happen, even as small as finding a water bottle refill station, we’d comment on how lucky we were.

As we started doing this, we realized truly just how lucky we were. It’s not every day you’re driving through the countryside of Ireland with your best friends. Sure, it rained 60% of the time we were there, but the sun was out when we went to the Cliffs of Moher and when we hiked through Killarney National Park – how lucky are we! A volcano might have been erupting during our one day in Iceland causing the Blue Lagoon to be evacuated, but we got to see northern lights and an erupting volcano (from a distance) – how lucky are we! And we might have run over a boulder in our rental car making the door near impossible to open, but we got to drive through a canyon and see the Gap of Dunloe – how lucky are we! I could go on with these for a while.

Traveling is never 100% smooth and never goes quite how you planned it, especially when four college students plan it on a budget. But perspective changes everything and our “lucky girl” mindset made this awesome trip even more awesome. So, thank you, Madison Grajzar , for keeping us positive and for reminding us just how lucky we are.