We had just arrived in Fez after a seven and a half hour road-trip from the Sahara desert, and in that moment I realized that he knew all too well of the struggles tourists faced while driving through his homeland.

I never thought I’d see the day where I would find myself floating in steaming, mineral-rich waters with over one hundred strangers in Germany while I was completely nude. But as luck would have it, I did just that.

We strolled down the steep alleyways cascading with off-white awnings, tables, and chairs and followed the sound of music that echoed throughout Praça Gil Eanes. The sweet scent of expensive perfumes mixed so well with the sea salted air around us- Lagos is a sea of exotic people and full of energy.

Our first night there, we grabbed ourselves a bottle of wine and took it upstairs to enjoy the sun setting over the town below us. But as Kyle kicked his feet up and indulged in the view of the lava spewing out of the top of the highest peak, my imagination couldn’t help itself. And it took over into a downright spiral.

Moments like that are going to be moments I’ll never forget. When we didn’t get it just right. And I know the next three hundred and some odd days will be full of them.

But until then, when I look out over the most breathtaking sandstone cliffs in Portugal, when I breathe in that soft oceanic air into my lungs, when I hear the chatter of passersby in tongues I can’t decipher, I am brought back to the here and now, and I remember why we’re doing this and what brought us here to begin with.

And when I returned to the muddy Mississippi soil of my hometown, I knew that, that was just the beginning of my time abroad. I also knew exactly who I wanted to take with me on the next trip across the pond.

I’m thirty-something years old, and although I never learned to plunge into the deep-end like an olympian diver, I have plenty of experiences diving head-first into life.