Today’s Think Kit prompt: Where did you travel this year? Did it move or change you?

**Before I start, I want to admit my guilt in not keeping up with Think Kit. I have flagged all of the emails and I WILL get around to writing these blogs. I promise I’m not a slacker, things have just been hectic lately!

While my trip to Tempe, Arizona didn’t move or change me, it’s one that I’m glad I took.

As an Arizona State University alum, I haven’t gone back to Tempe in about seven years. It’s funny the plans you make when you’re graduating that end up falling to the side. My closest sorority sisters and I vowed to meet up once a year for a girls weekend so that we would stay in touch, and I figured I would go back to visit my alma mater all the time.

Well, neither of these things have happened.

People get married, have kids, hold down jobs that don’t allow them to travel whenever they’d like. All of us moved to different parts of the United States and life got in the way. This year, I decided to change that. Every year, I get the email from my sorority that homecoming is around the corner, join our tailgate! Every year I mark myself as a maybe and put it on the back burner. Will it fit into my schedule? What about the other vacations I have planned for the year?

So in 2015, I decided there was no more room for maybes. I was a definite yes. After the death of a good friend out in Arizona, I made the choice to stop putting things off, because you don’t know if you’ll have another chance down the road. I booked our flights and hotel room and off we went to Arizona in November.

I was so excited to show my boyfriend around my school. I’ve seen IU (where he attended) many times but he’s never seen this part of my life. It was fun to show him around campus, take him to my favorite bars and restaurants and have him meet some of my friends that I spent four years of my life with. Some of my best girlfriends from college couldn’t make the trip, but hopefully my pictures and texts have convinced them that they need to come out next year (hint hint)!

We drank like we were still in college, tailgated, bar hopped and caught up with people I haven’t seen in almost a decade. I also was shocked at how different the campus looked from when I attended school. In the time since I’ve graduated, new building have popped up, there is a light rail that goes through campus and throughout the city, bars and restaurants I used to frequent have closed and new establishments have popped up and the kids that attend ASU now look SO YOUNG. Or maybe I just look so old, I don’t know.

I felt like three days wasn’t nearly enough time. I question my decision to move back to Indiana all the time, because life is SO GOOD out there in the valley of the sun. But on the other hand, I would have missed out on so many great opportunities and experiences that I’ve had here in Indy if I hadn’t moved back. The grass is always greener on the other side, right? Although in the case of Arizona, there isn’t really any grass, sooo…

Homecoming weekend was a whirlwind of three days packed full of reliving old memories and making new ones. I know that I’ll be RSVPing with a definite yes every year from now on. For those of you who say that you pay for your friends if you’re in a sorority, I only have this to say to you: it was the best investment I’ve ever made.