I was just thinking about when my coworker and I took a group of kids to England and France a few summers ago, and things associated with that. At the end of the trip, I stayed in France to go visit my old stomping grounds down south, and so I left the group to go home on a flight with my coworker (per our own full agreement and arrangement ahead of time). I waited too long to decide to do that, so I had to pay $350 for the flight change (Ugh). We also each had to pay $937.50 for the trip in the first place (Meh). Therefore, I had to pay a total of $1287.50 for a 10-day trip that included all accommodations, food, tours, and transport, and another ten days on location at my own expense, which is really not bad at all. At all.
However – and this is a BIG however – as part of our arranging and hosting this trip in the first place, the tour company gave us each a training trip.
Mine, as I selected it, was a long weekend trip, with food, housing, tours, and transportation included, to downtown Rome, Italy. Therefore, my just-under 1300 dollars actually got me two separate trips to Europe, with almost all expenses paid for most of the time on the trips.
I really do come up with the craziest stuff to have happen in my life. And – what is possibly the best part of this all – I don’t even seem to notice how absurd it all is, until I find myself ruminating on this and thats one afternoon, years later, and it suddenly hits me that, say, taking a free trip to Europe is not a normal thing in life. I take this moment to nod my head to my cousin for the question she exasperatedly declared one evening at my apartment a few years ago: “Hannah, do you even know what real life is like?”
Indeed, fair cousin, it seems I do not know that most of the time – reality bites, so I live somewhere else, and I love it. 🙂
Post-a-day 2018
