Hey guys and welcome back to my blog.  Today I am going to be talking about one important thing I have learned through traveling, journaling.  You do not need to travel to start journaling, but this is what inspired my interest in journaling.  As I ventured to new people and had conversations with people from different cultures, I began to create new thoughts about myself and the world.  Traveling lets you learn more about yourself and the world around you.  Sometimes it can be a lot to keep all the thoughts within your head, so journaling helps me put my ideas onto paper and sort through any confusing thoughts in my head.  Sometimes traveling can be stressful and overwhelming, and journaling gives you the perfect opportunity to express how you feel.  Throughout the process of this blog I have even further learned about my travel experiences by writing about them further and thinking about them in different ways.  

 Also, journaling can help you set goals for when you travel.  I would journal as I traveled around Europe and I wrote different things I wanted to see or different ways to make myself comfortable with talking to strangers at hostels.  Journaling would sort all the things I wanted to accomplish while traveling.  There is a lot of extra time when traveling that allows you to reflect on your experiences.  I can think back to many long train rides and planes where I just wrote within my journal about the new experiences from previous days, and these are some of my favorite travel memories. 

I also think journaling is very important because it allows you to reflect on past experiences and see how you have grown.  Journaling allows you to go inside your mind when a picture was taken or at a high or low point in your life and reflect on it.  I have many different entries throughout my trip around eastern Europe and some of them are from when I was in a good mood and others are from when I was stressed or exhausted.  Journaling gave me an outlet to deal with any negative emotions while traveling.  I also recently started college and have used a journal to express the different emotions that come with this new exciting, but also scary beginning.  If you are thinking about starting journaling, you should!  You do not need to journal every day, but you can just pick it up every once in a while, or if you have extra time.  I promise it is a very fulfilling exercise that will help you relieve your anxiety. (Here is a link to another blogger who talks about journaling)!!