My younger daughter, Jenny, is preparing for study and travel abroad in the new year, and so her focus for the last several months has been on where to go, how long to stay in each place and how to get there. Being a child of the Internet age, she has of course done extensive research, visiting numerous travel websites, plotting various itineraries and comparing fares to get the most out of her time and money. Bright and detail-oriented, she has tackled the task with gusto and not a little pleasure, but one aspect of the trip has made planning it more than a little challenging: she will be traveling with seven other girls.

Last spring Jenny learned she would be one of 12 senior Loyola nursing students to serve her community health clinical experience in Guildford, a small city located in Surrey, southwest of London. Four days a week for over a month she will get a first-hand look at Great Britain’s public health service. On long weekends and before and after that term she plans to get in as much travel on the British Isles and the Continent as possible. For two-plus weeks before her study starts, several of her nursing friends will be visiting a slew of cities. Starting in Madrid, they’ll go on to Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, Munich and Berlin.

Just hammering out that itinerary took some effort, as you can imagine trying to accomodate the wishes of eight young ladies might. When it seemed no one was moving to start nailing down flights and accomodations as this fall term ticked away, Jenny went into full travel agent mode and spent hours finding the most efficient and economical links between cities and options for overnight stays. Frustration struck when, just days before the girls were to gather, credit cards in hand, to book their intercity flights together after agreeing on the details, one of the group finally decided she wanted to explore other options. What about train travel? (More expensive than flying, overall, Jen had already found.) Do we really need to worry about reserving hostels in advance when we’ll be traveling in the off-season? (With eight of us? Are you kidding!?) More than anything, Jenny was more than a little upset that at that late date someone had finally decided to jump in after she had spent so much time and effort on behalf of the entire bunch.

Everything was put on hold for another week as a few of the girls went off to a Student Travel Agency office and came back with an alternate plan that added another city and some Eurail travel — and at least $400 to the bill. The benefits were that the agent would be able to book and reserve all their travel and accomodations at once and bill each traveler separately. Jenny graciously (well, okay, I heard some grumbling) decided she’d just go along with the new plan. She did warn me, however, that if there was any complaining during their travels from the others about not having any money to spend on food or shopping, she might find it difficult to bite her tongue.

Her dad and I have mostly sat back and observed this process, offering a sympathetic ear and only a little advice. We know that all of this is part of learning to be a world traveler, and although Jen has been fortunate to travel abroad twice already, this is her first experience at taking the reins herself. My hope is that once all the bother of nailing down the mundane but necessary details of the trip is done, she and her friends will be able to really enjoy each destination and each other as they explore these new places together.

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader