Heads up, I'm planning to party like its 2012 next year.

Hello, March. Good month, March... Full of leprechauns and spring break and such. Also full of projects and mid-term assignments, but it will feel good to get those over with. I'm signing up for Summer and Fall classes next week. My for real last time to sign up for classes, if all goes as planned. And sometimes things don't go as planned, but we roll with it, don't we? I'm not looking at all the ways in which things could screw me over. Instead, I've been thinking a lot lately about how I'm going to celebrate the end of this master's degree road I've been travelin'. It really has been a fiasco at times. Come graduation day, it will have taken me nearly 5 years, two different programs in two states, moving myself and (eventually) my cat four times in two cities, five jobs (2 assistantships), good new friends and colleagues, one failed class, one academic probation, one appeal process to get off probation, one successful attempt to beg for transfer credit, two cars, a billion (pretty sure that's accurate) miles driven, numerous headaches over course content, hopefully one practicum experience, 3 loans (but one already paid off, whatwhat), and plenty of expensive books. Also minus one mother and one aunt who would have been as stoked as I will be to finally get my ass across the stage to get this freaking degree.

In short: come December 17 at 6:30 p.m. at Mizzou's Hearnes Center, I plan to be in a celebratory mood and prepping to embark on some sort of trip. I had been thinking about going to Quebec City because I decided it's gorgeous and looks especially wonderlandy at Christmas and I think I'll be in a wonderlandy kind of mood:
I can see myself strolling down this little road all blissful and graduated. But after giving it more thought: I would be freezing. While it's very beautiful, it's easy to sit here in my warm house and imagine the lovely world of Christmas lights and snow of Quebec City without actually feeling what I'm sure is face and limb-numbing cold. I wouldn't enjoy that. If this winter has taught me nothing else, it's taught me that I am wimpier when it comes to snow and cold than I had led myself to believe. So, I've come to the decision to leave Quebec City in Winter to the hardier Northern stock of humans and go see it some day in the Summer.

So, that left me with the question of 'Well, newly graduated super happy version of Jill, where do you want to take your blissful self?' So then I thought: Macchu Pichu, of course! (see picture in posting from yesterday) Because, I REALLY want to go there and I need to go there before certain things happen: 1) I get old and can't make the climb 2) Peru closes the site because of destruction done by the throngs of tourists that are constantly visiting the site.
The second thing is already kind of happening. The government is now issuing only a certain number of permits for tours and there is a cap of 400 people per day who can climb up to one of the upper areas of the site. 200 at 8 am and 200 at 10 am. Then it's closed off for the day. So, it's kind of imperative that I get to MP within the next few years. However, it's kind of pricey (Although I could probably spring for it and get there for 1500 if I was really frugal) and secondly, I would go to this awesome place alone (in that I would be traveling alone; I'd be with thousands of people at the site, and I'd go with a tour, so there'd be others to share it with in the moment, but after it was over, it'd just be my own experience). I'm not afraid to travel by myself, but it's really lame to go someplace super awesome and then return home and want to share it with loved ones, and they don't get it. MP is my tippity top travel destination and going there and having this awesome experience and having nobody really understand what it was like to go and see this place would be extra disappointing and I'd rather put it off and wait for a travel buddy than do this particular trip alone. It was disappointing to go to Venice before anybody I knew back home had gone because it was hard to be able to gush and share the experience and feel like they 'got it'. It's much better now because I have family and friends who have been and it's more of a shared experience, but MP would be even worse since it's practically my everything.

So, I'm giving up on the Macchu Pichu idea for next year and trying to think of other options. I've mostly settled on taking a cruise. They're cheap in January, I could see some ancient Mayan ruins (which might satisfy my ancient ruin craving for a while), I might be able to see some cute sea turtles and some cool toucans, I could zipline through a jungle (YES, PLEASE), and I've never been on a cruise, so it would be a new experience. Also, there's the added luxury of unpacking once and still seeing a number of different places. I've been looking at cruise lines over the past few days and some are way out of my league, financially. The reviews I've seen of some aren't really up my alley, either. I think a Caribbean cruise would be pretty sweet, and there are a couple of cheap cruises that leave from Galveston or New Orleans, which would be more convenient than having to go to Miami or Tampa. And 5-6 days of sandy beaches and fun adventures in the Caribbean would certainly make me feel suitably celebrated. So, I've mostly settled on this idea.

I have some major assignments due over the next few weeks which are desperately tugging me away from doing any more research on my post-graduation excursion plans. But, I have it in my head now. Anytime I feel upset at the course content or the program in general, I'm going to imagine myself swimming with sea turtles and ziplining through a jungle.