Ever since I went abroad last semester, I’ve been obsessed with saving every little memento from a trip and keeping it for my scrapbook. I started saving things from my journeys abroad, anything from postcards and plane tickets to receipts that told a story of my long nights out. I envisioned creating a lovely scrapbook once I got back to the United States, and that is exactly what I did.
I started with my travels to Italy and added specific pages for Milan and Florence. When I started my scrapbook in January, I had recently gone to the New England Aquarium, so my next page is about the aquarium, and I added the sticker I got there. Scrapbooking is very fun because it is a physical representation of the memories of those special places you visited.
My love of drawing and coloring was also rediscovered during my time abroad, and has continued into this semester. While I was away, my classes were not very rigorous, as I was no longer taking chemistry, which forces you to be in 10 million labs a semester. Therefore, I had much more free time, which I used to take up the hobbies I had once neglected. One of my friends had given me a dotted journal for my birthday, so I bought some markers, and off I went.
I was first inspired to draw when I was in the town of Spiez, Switzerland. I was having a very peaceful moment with my friend Umama, and it inspired me to put pen to paper. I first drew a cow, as we were in Switzerland. How could I not?
It then took off from there, and I took a lot of inspiration from Pinterest or the scene around me. I would mostly look up cute designs that I liked or characters that were cute to me, and copy them into my drawing notebook. These drawings were little souvenirs of their own, as I now had a representation of what my scenery looked like at a specific point in time, or just drawings of cute and aesthetic things that I drew in Istanbul or London.
Journaling became something very valuable to me as I came back home to Boston. Thinking back now, I am mourning the fact that I did not journal more of my experiences in other countries and how I was feeling in the moment. So, I am going to try to do that when I go on more trips.
When you journal during a trip, it is really fun to look back on your thoughts in that moment and see how excited or nervous you were in the moment. It can also show you your growth as a traveler. However, I am trying to incorporate journaling into my everyday life as opposed to just when I travel. I try to journal in the morning, as that is when I feel I have the energy to put my thoughts down.
I have tried very hard not to judge what I am writing and to just let the thoughts flow so that I can deeply feel whatever emotion is coming up and not feel like I have to hold back. I hope you got inspiration for your next trip or for mindfulness practices that are good for your free time!