I am in the midst of scrapbooking the semester I spent in London during college. I am putting together all of the scraps of paper I saved, bits and pieces of journaling I wrote and many photographs I took during my four months in Europe into one place. It took me a little while to get into this project - there were some things that felt so immature and junior in the old snippets. But I am rocking and rolling now.
I've approached most of this effort in the order of which my trip happened - starting with the pre-semester tour we did in August and leading all the way until December. I recently hit the later end of this journey and have been digging into the last bits of journaling I did. Here, it is obvious that I studied, I traveled and mostly I learned who I was during this time I was away from home. I figured out a lot about me.
One of the last pieces I put into a scrapbooking-friendly format during my project was a list of assorted things I wrote about myself. I labeled the original document "Self Discovery." Interestingly enough, this was the one thing I most connected with now, almost 8 years later. A lot of these things still ring true. I've honed some of them. A few have changed and some have morphed. But all in all, Kelli Walsh Ertel became who she is back then, and she is still here (and pretty good, I have to say) today.
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