"A dream is a goal without a plan."

Our destination: Budapest, Hungary. Some of you may be wondering why? After all, we’re planning on Paris, all over Germany, Italy, Switzerland, etc. all between England and Hungary. Welp, being that our accommodations are contingent on our friends and family being home, we have made some great alterations and it’s going to be better than ever!

Something I’ve learned about myself is that when I have planned something out like to a “T” it’s not unusual for my blood pressure to rise when things get thrown totally off. I’ve known this about myself for quite some time and have been working diligently to overcome it. I’m mean come on, that’s life? My sister Kimi used always say, “If you want to make Heavenly Father laugh, just tell him your 5 year plan.” Ha. Ha. Being a person known for always having a 5 year plan, I don’t know if she would say that to be a sass or just as a general statement or philosophy of life. The best or most effective medicine for treating this unfortunate disease of fouled-up-plan-anxiety or unmet-expectation-heart-attack ;) was the last 2 years of my life. You’d think that the mission would do it for me. I served in Taiwan. Does anything ever really turn out the way you thought when speaking or reading Chinese?? But alas, I’ve decided that time was not “the best two years” but the “easiest two years” or in my case 18 months. All I had to do was get up and things would happen. I made plans and they either worked or we were shown another plan. Real life is way harder. I just can’t seem to find the time to pray 4,000 and one times a day so the Lord can tell me how to breathe. Nope, the mission far from rid me of this disease. In fact, I would venture to say it made it worse. 18 months of knowing the plan and knowing it worked out just the way it was supposed to—the Lord’s way— and never questioning that, man, that’ll mess a girl up when she’s thrust back into the twists and turns of the realm of this mortal life that seems to matter far above all else. Hello! Sure “The Great Day of Judgment” is important albeit intense, but let’s remember, even that day is based off the plans of this life, changed or not. Eesh! Well, now that I’ve made you all think that I’m totally a psycho “my way or the highway” person that just might explode at the slightest change of my delicately arranged plans, anticipated or not, let’s get back to the point that I’ve been working on this (and just by way of disclaimer, I’m really not “one of those” and if you disagree, from personal experience or not, feel free to bite your tongue :P).

One of my best friends Rebecca Edwards Woolf lent me a book about a year and a half ago, or more, titled, “When prayers seem unanswered.” Great little read. I read it all the way to Paraguay—I think that’s the trip. It was so good in fact that I actually left it on the plane in the pocket of the seat in front of me. You know, so when the stewardesses go through and clean it the one person that really needs it more than Becca and I will end up with it (or in other words, I forgot it, sorry Bec, I think you’ve since referred to how you “gave” it to me, but I actually know that that’s not how it actually played out…I promise I’ll buy you a new one…someday when I recover financially from this trip). Anyway, there was a part in the book about expectations and how they really are the reason people get all huffy puffy, stressed, anxious, frustrated, blah blah blah, about life. In the margin Becca wrote something to the effect of, “So, don’t have expectations,” and it went on to talk about how being careful with expectations is good. Not to say that Bec thinks we should never have expectations but more like don’t allow your expectations to be life or death. I’ve learned a lot from her words and have really striven to work toward having a healthier relationship with expectations. Oh yeah! And BYUSA (Brigham Young University Student Service Association) and my position with all the clubs on campus, etc. was the “best medicine” that I referenced above. Absolutely unpredictable, everyday. Oh BYUSA.

It’s still a work in progress, but I think the next bit will show you that I’m most certainly improving. Particularly for this trip, I didn't have a set schedule for anything other than one or two locations so as to avoid potential unwanted feelings :)

Off to Hungary we go! We did some research and work with our friends to find all the ways we could get to mainland Europe and then on. After hours of discussion there were two options:
1. Take the EuroStar through the Chunnel: 2.5 hrs, really nice accommodations, leaves from the train station we’re most familiar with and get us straight to Paris to catch our night train to Hungary. 200-300 pounds Ugh!! Next please!
2. Take the overground to the underground to the overground to a bus to the ferry to another bus to catch a train to Paris to catch another bus to a different train station from which our over night train leaves. About 100 pounds.

These options were determined while I was out with my friend Haley

We met up for the evening, had dinner at this cutie little Italian spot, saw a musical "Pettycoats and Dreamboats", and ended it with ice sunday's at McD's...so great!

and were presented to me upon my return at around midnight-ish. I wasn’t too stoked just because time and money are the things you often can't help but think about when traveling, but being that those were “the only options” I was ready to run with it. Janise and Paul were leaning toward us taking the Eurostar for convenience sake but we’d already forked out a million dollars for the Eurail pass and didn’t feel like convenience was a good enough reason to drop another 300 bones. Janise really wasn’t so keen on the cheaper option because she thought it would be harder, but I just thought it was backpacking-esc, way more adventurous, way cheaper, and way more fun. I still felt like we could go cheaper. I started doing some research and Janise gradually joined in. After about two hours we hit the jackpot! We found out about this totally sweet rail ticket that we could buy that was more than 50% less than the standard methods. We went with that. Obvy! For those prudent of heart don’t’ judge me here: basically, what we did was went to the main station and bought what’s called a “One day return pass” which literally means it gets you all the way to France and it’s significantly discounted because the limited options: roundtrip ONLY. It was so cheap that it would cut our costs down to a mere 33.50 pounds plus 2 pounds for one of the bus rides!!! Exactly $100 less than our “cheap” option. Now I could sleep with sweet dreams of sugar plums dancing in my head.

Elated doesn’t even begin to describe my excitement!