Change is inevitable. GROWTH is optional.

Well, here I am.  Sitting in Newport.  Back at the home I grew up in.  My room is piled to the nines with my boxes from moving and my photos and momentos from growing up are still in their same familiar places. 

What a whirlwind the past few weeks have been.  Yesterday for the first time during all of this decision making did my choices really start to feel real and sink in.  My great friends Dylan & Jess came to my studio in Eugene yesterday, and we moved the last of my things over to the coast.  As we were driving out of town, I couldn't help reflecting with Jess.  "Wow, I'm really leaving...can you believe it?  I mean...I may never live here again."  As my dad pointed out last week, I've been in Eugene for about a third of my life so far...so it certainly feels like leaving home whenever I leave Eugene. 

There are a ton of things I love about Eugene: the size of the town, the liberal vibe, the incredibly supportive dance network there, my amazing, amazing friends, the rivers, the bike friendliness and all of the trees littering the streets.  But, this year was hard for me in Eugene.  Those of you who know me well know that it was time for a major adventurama....and while I held back tears as I bid adieu to my "landlord"/friend Amanda yesterday when I turned in my key, I still felt so strongly inside that I was heading in the right direction.  Over the past few months I have done a lot of reflecting, and I felt like it was time for me to leave Eugene in order to grow more as a person, and give more to the global community.  I felt like I could be doing more, and making a greater impact.  Wrestling with myself over the past year with all of the change I have experienced, I reminded myself that change will always happen.  That is a constant.  But how one reacts to change is the variable.  And, at the end of the day, I want to be the one making my life happening for me (not waiting for it TO happen to me), and helping to also change other people's lives for the better.  That is what fills my cup.

I have 16 days before I leave for India, and most of my "to do" list is complete.  I'm all vaccinated, halfway packed and somewhat organized.  I plan on spending the next two weeks soaking up tons of quality time with family and friends, frequenting the beach with my dog, and eating as much of that crab soup from Local Ocean and black bottom cupcakes from Panini as I can!  It is so surreal when I think about it...that right now I am in a place that has been a homebase from the time I can remember; a little comfort hole with familiar faces in a town where pretty much literally "everybody knows your name"....and in just a few weeks I will have all of that flipped on its head.  I'm going to cozy up and snuggle with my familiarity for the time being....but when its time to leave, I'm going to strap my backpack on and say "unknown?  It's been far too long.  Bring it on."

Life Is Short. Share Your Passion.

Kigali Airport

Wow! This is the airport I will be flying into in Rwanda.  How cool is that??!!

Defining Adventure...

It's hard to choose a blog name, let alone a blog address.  Too many choices!  But alas, "Super Adventurama" it is.  I decided that this title could cover most any major event in my life, so I could continue to renew the blog feed as I see fit.

Just out of curiosity, I googled "adventure".  I loved the definition Wikipedia gave me, and just had to share. Seems fitting:

An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.^[1] The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports. The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.
Adventurous experiences create psychological and physiological arousal,^[2] which can be interpreted as negative (e.g. fear) or positive (e.g. flow), and which can be detrimental as stated by the Yerkes-Dodson law. For some people, adventure becomes a major pursuit in and of itself. According to adventurer André Malraux, in his La Condition Humaine (1933), "If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?". Similarly, Helen Keller stated that "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

So family and friends, there you have it.  I'm leaving for India September 16th (just bought my ticket and secured my visa. Yay!)  Then off to Tanzania.  Adventure, I choose you!

I will do my best to actually blog for you!  But...if I don't for a while, just give me a nudge and I'll get right on it.  I may be off snorkeling with hippos or something...

Leave feedback for me and let me know what you want to see/read.  I'll be including lots of pictures, no question.

Love, Nikki