Dr. Rosalyn | Travel Lightly & Take Care of Yourself

So the end of the semester has arrived and much to my delight I can announce that the department of psychology at Indiana University Kokomo will launch its first international travel course in the Spring of 2019.  They were impressed by the proposal and point of the course, gave some good feedback and ultimately approved us pending some cost reduction for students which I'm totally on board with.  That means for this trip we are nixing London but we will have more time to explore the two cities we are traveling to: Vienna, Austria and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  The photo above is from my first solo trip there in 2015.  Hmm just realized I keep ended up there in odd numbered years ha because I went back last year as well as my hop over to London, England (United Kingdom) for the weekend. 

Anyway, we're going to spend four nights in each city, keep our educational components in place and give travelers a free day to explore the city in each locale.  I'm super excited about this trip mostly because I think the course will be highly beneficial to our students in terms of exposing them to new places outside of our community but also in presenting the diversity that is there  in terms of approaches to mental health, the people and my favorite part of all travel--the food.  We'll also all learn a bit of Dutch and German in advance of the trip so we can find our hotels, bathrooms and get directions at a bare minimum.  But I do have Dutch friends so I'll see about learning more pertinent bits of information too.

Mom mentioned to me that she regrets not traveling more.  Now that our pace is slowed down significantly I may invite her to tag along.  At worst she won't do the expenditures with us and just explore a bit.  I may encourage her to bring a friend so they can giggle it up at an old lady pace and remark about all the things that are different from the states and home.  Or I may just find a spot to take her to locally--well stateside and let her do the same thing.  We're home from the hospital now and trying to get adjusted to her new temporary normal.  Gotta get strength up and diet back together and then in a few weeks we can go to the next stage.  Home health care has been contracted and yeah we're figuring it out.  So double good news and lots of things to do before each reaches the end point.

Have a good week everyone.