3 Months to Go

Time is really going quickly now as I wind down towards my going home date. I can't believe I'm approaching a year here in Ireland, it feels pretty surreal. I think even more so because the first time I came here I returned home after two weeks, so this just feels extra special to me you know?

I've got a trip to Brussels coming up in exactly two weeks and then I've got some pride events next month which will bring me to July. Other than that, I desperately want to see Greece but it's only going to get more expensive with the nicer weather so I'm really hoping I can still make that work. Aside from that, I want to see somewhere in eastern Europe like Poland or Romania and then if I can somehow manage it I'd like to visit somewhere in Spain. After this, it'll be time to fly home :)

I've been doing a lot of thinking about whether I want to take the visa for New Zealand and spend another year or two away from home. There's the one side of me that thinks I'd be crazy not to take advantage of the opportunity but then the other side of me can find a lot of potential cons.

• 16 hour flight - I DEFINITELY won't be able to come for a visit
• Isolated - everything aside from Australia is 10 hours or more by flight away...I don't know if I can withstand taking 10 or 11 hours flights every month.
• Traveling - Europe makes things easy with super cheap flights but it doesn't appear NZ has that same luxury. I wouldn't be able to do little 4 days trips like I do here which means I'd need to budget more money AND time for each trip.
• CANZUK - For those of you who don't know, there's a movement to abolish visa requirements for Commonwealth countries. This would eliminate the need for a visa for travel / work between the UK, Canada, NZ, and Australia. If I went and spent all the money required for this visa only to find out 5 years later the visa was abolished, I'd be a touch resentful.

So I'm really leaning towards staying home and focusing solely on building my blog. I want to dive into cooking videos, more animal rights vids, and getting back into 2 or 3 recipes a week. I would love to actually take the time to put together a hard cover cookbook with 100 or 150 recipes not released on the blog, something I specifically put together for a hardcover. All of this requires me to be pretty grounded for a while you know? Also, I love the idea of getting a nice apartment and a cat / dog and being close enough to my family to visit whenever I'd like.

As far as travel goes, I've had such a wonderful experience here making my way through Europe but the constant travel has also exhausted me a little if I'm being honest. I like the idea of taking one or two trips a year throughout the United States or somewhere in Canada because I haven't seen really anything in Canada yet embarrassingly enough.

All I know is I'm so excited to see my friends and family back home :) Feels like it's been ages and I'm really looking forward to reconnecting!!

HAPPY VEG