Chicken Fried

“You know I like my chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right, and the radio on. Well, I was raised up beneath the shade of a [Texan] pine, and that’s home you know – sweet tea, pecan pie, and homemade wine, where the peaches grow. My house, it’s not much to talk about, but it’s filled with love and grown in Southern ground…”
-Chicken Fried, Zac Brown Band

Truth be told, I’m a Southern girl at heart. I was raised in the South, my kids will come to love the South someday, even if they never live there, and one of these days, I’ll be buried underneath that big open Texas sky.

That being said, I want to live in Europe for a little while. Long enough to really get a grasp on the culture and fit myself into it, to establish lasting friendships so whenever I visit I have a place to stay and friends to catch up with.

I know this is all very random, but I’m thinking about this because, honestly, only I could attract every Texan visiting the same countries as us everywhere we go. Sitting in the hotel lobby last night, trying desperately to get internet so my mom could tell the people she works with that no, she can’t make some meeting because she’s in freaking Germany, and a guy wearing a UT ring sat down next to me and said hi. We struck up a conversation, making jokes about each other’s respective schools and discussing what had brought him to Munich – apparently he just graduated from the UT business school and was celebrating by traveling between Switzerland, Germany, and Italy for a month. Alone. How incredibly bad ass is that?

[I’m sorry, but I have to interrupt my own story here to say that I just told my mom I was hungry and her response was “Here, have this,” and passed me a bottle of vitamins. Cool, thanks.]

Anyways, Dallas' story made me realize that I want to do nothing more than travel around alone at least once. I want to see places and do things on my own time, meet new people and be forced to speak and learn other languages. Maybe after college or during a summer? We’ll see.