A Trip of Firsts

This weekend, a few friends and I traveled to Palermo, Sicily. This was the first trip that my friends and I have planned on our own. This trip was full of a lot of positive and negative firsts. The most positive experience I had this week was being able to navigate a new place. On Thursday, we arrived and effectively traveled from the airport to the city of Palermo. I checked into my first AirBnB without any conflicts. Throughout the weekend, my friends and I ate in restaurants all around the city, shopped, explored the beaches, and found the many hidden gems of Palermo. Traveling is usually not a strong suit of mine. I entered into the trip with expectations that traveling would ruin this experience for me. Whether that be getting stopped in security or running to catch a flight, I was expecting something to go wrong. Most of the trip went without a problem, and I am proud I was able to navigate my trip. However, that brings me to my least favorite experience of the week. My flight from Palermo to Rome left early this morning at 6:30AM. I had a plan to catch a bus to the airport at 4AM to start the journey back to Rome. Unfortunately, my friends and I overslept and ended up having to run to catch the bus. We made it with 1 minute until departure. If we had not rushed to catch this bus, we would have missed the bus and as a result, missed our flight home. This caused tensions and high anxiety within the group of girls I was traveling with. On the plane ride home, I had time for some inner reflection. I do not like when things do not go as planned. I do not like the unexpected. This experience taught me that sometimes you just have to work with what life throws at you. Not everything is going to go as planned but I learned that I just have to make the best out of what life throws at me.