Christmas

This is a first of a couple of posts that I should be making tonight. This one is going to be about my frustrations over my vacation planning.

So as it has been made aware, I was initially planning to have 3 different vacation schemes throughout the year in order to visit all the places I wished to go. During December I was going to travel Southern Europe. During March I was to travel the UK. During June I was going to travel Northern Europe. This was my initial plan, until travesty hit.

About a week ago I began realising that I had financial issues. I was running out of money, and fast. I needed to come up with a way to see how much I was allowed to spend. So I looked at my budget and calculated the amount of money I currently have and divided it up by 38 weeks. I had around $4,500 to spend for 38 weeks. This was around 2,250 GBP (The input area won't let me do the pound symbol). Which meant for around 59 GBP per week, which is really good. I could handle that, and then the big picture came in. When was I planning to travel, and to where, and how much was this going to cost. I needed to figure out my vacation plans.

It quickly became obvious that the money I had would not go far. I couldn't survive if I had 3 different vacations. I would be so poor they would end up kicking me out of the halls. So I thought hard about it and came up with a plan to do all of my Europe travels in June and go home for christmas time. In March I planned on just hanging around and not doing much, probably go to the library here and such.

I decided to travel in June because earlier my mom had been talking about how she wanted me home for christmas, and so I thought that like this I could go and visit her for christmas and do my vacationing plans.

So I sat and planned the places I wanted to go and around how much the cost would be if I were to go there. I first made a list of the places I wanted to go: Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Venice, Athens, Helsinki, Stockholm. Those were my 8 choices if I had to narrow it down. So then I calculated expected costs. 630 GBP for travelling, 300 GBP for food, 300 GBP for hostels. That ended up with a grand total of $2,500 for travelling just in June.

So then I took the $2,500 out of my finances, and looked at my new budget. I took 4 weeks out for christmas, and 4 weeks out for Europe, so my budget was only over 30 weeks now. This didn't help much because now my weekly income was a grand total of 33 GBP. And for anyone who isn't living in England, only having 33 GBP a week for food/mobile/laundry/and the occasional luxury, 33 doesn't even begin to cut it. But I knew I had to manage.

All of my plans have recently changed due to an idea my mom has had. She has now come to the conclusion that she doesn't want me to go home for christmas. She would much rather have me travel and would be willing to pay for my expenses for me to travel in Europe instead of going home. This is a curius idea since it was my step dad who asked her to do it. She is of course hurting since she hasn't seen me in forever and my stepdad thinks that she needs to learn to let go of me and let me live my life. So she is trying that by not seeing me.

Now this is tragic since I was very excited to go and see her over christmas. I really want to go to her for christmas and spend a little time with her. So now she wants me to go travelling instead and I don't know what to do. Do I go against her wishes and go and see her during christmas or do I just travel Europe without her? Yes it is a fact that most students are very excited to leave their families behind and never see them again, but I recently saw a TV show that has changed my mind. I was watching Queer as Folk (UK version) and saw how Nathan's mom was so hurt by Nathan leaving her and so I figured that is how my mom is feeling, and I suddenly felt horrible for leaving. Is it sad that I feel bad for following my own path because it hurts my mother?

So that is my current dillema, do I choose christmas with mother against her wishes, or do I go to europe and travel and by doing so not seeing my mom until June.

Inquisitively,
Aram the Garmo