I've been home a month, and really feel like I need to write about my trip Europe, but what I want to write about isn't the beauty of Michaelangelo's David, the deliciousness of the gelato, the enchantment of Venice and the grandeur of the Alps. I want to talk about spending ten days with your family in a nine passenger van traveling through three countries where you have no hotels booked, speak none of the languages, have no itinerary, and have lost the debit card. That my beloved readers, may seem like a recipe for disaster, but to the contrary it was delightful, stressful of course at times, but all in all a really great trip.

Spending time with those who love me most taught me a lot about myself and how at 25 I've matured more than I thought despite my childish tendencies. I remember in junior high I was a completely different person around my family and friends. I was trying so hard to be cool and impress my friends that at times I would end up treating my family horribly as I struggled to find an identity. We have all been through this awkward time and can relate to each other. Now after serving a mission and having lived with over twenty different girls I realize that I can't hide and that my true self begins to emerge as a person that is neither the person I was when I was fourteen and changing personalities as I switched between Jenny who was trying to impress (friends) and the Jenny who knew she was loved unconditionally and could act however she wanted with her family.

My point is that on this Europe trip all of this came together for me in my head. I realized that I am myself around my family, but it's that same myself that I am around my friends. My self-confidence has grown enough to stand up for myself when I'm with my friends, and my feelings of charity and love for my family have grown so much that I want to show that when I am with them and not just take advantage of their unconditional love which forces them to put up with my cranky moods. They still see my crankiness, but hopefully in smaller doses.

I'm not writing this to say I'm not hypocrite, I definitely still do many things that are fake to my friends and inconsiderate to my family. But spending a concentrated time alone with my family was great for me to see this evenness that is a part of my emergence to adulthood, expounding more on my theme of adulthood from my last post. And I'm interested to hear if you had similar experiences or if I'm just a little slow with my epiphanies.

And now a few pictures:

Here we are in front of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. We had an awesome bike tour by our friendly tour guide Marco. One of my favorite facts I learned from Marco is that all the industries in Florence are being taken over by the Chinese because the Italians just like to take naps.

Steph and I in Venice. Love her, a great travel companion and she is so non confrontational. She would be absolutely mortified by my dad when he would haggle about prices and demand tap water from the Italian waiters who tried to convince us that Italian tap water just wasn't fit to drink.

Cute, yes they are. The family in the Austrian Alps.Our beloved van. This was at church in Salzburg, I think it took about twenty minutes and an 83 point turn to get out of this predicament.

Today it finally happened. I was walking back to my office from lunch looking so professional in my black pin-striped dress pants and heels. And then, as I elegantly strode to the front door, thinking in my head how beautiful the sound of clicking heels is, I lifted my foot and my shoe didn't want to come with it. I fell forward and just smiled as I looked back at my shoe stuck in the crack between the two pieces of tile and the people around me who seemed to look more embarrassed than I felt. For some reason it just reminded me that I am now an independent adult in our nation's capitol, wearing heels, giving directions to people on the street who ask me how to get to the holocaust museum, paying into a 401K retirement plan, buying things like band-aids and neosporin instead of just stealing them from my parents house, and having a desire for the first time to buy things like furniture.

Don't get me wrong the silly part of me tends to come out more than the super serious, but it is refreshing once and awhile to be reminded of my continual emergence into adulthood.