Who doesn't love holiday travel?

My friends, it's time for another trip. Not that I've avoided traveling over the last few months, but for some reason domestic trips don't evoke the same allure that international ones do. I promised to post more regularly then failed, but my excuse is that I started blogging for the law school admissions site and double duty is just a bit overwhelming. What I might do is post those entries here as well. So much for hiding my true identity.

The exciting news is that in less than a week I will be departing for my fourth international trip within the year (though not calendar--I came back from South Korea on December 31st last year). My weekend getaway to Doha, Qatar also predates this blog, though on a rainy day those two trips would be worth blogging about. Both quite spontaneous and very spectacular, and, perhaps more unusually, both virtually free. This does make the second consecutive holiday season I will be spending abroad. An interesting pattern, one I'm ambivalent about repeating.

Holiday travel is just plain stressful. For a student, it is usually preceded by finals and/or other stressful end of the semester activities. For a worker in most industries, it means increased traffic and fewer employees to handle it since they're all fighting to take time off. There are long lines, not just at the airport but on the roads due to bad weather and increased shopping. Speaking of the weather, it's usually not very conducive to traveling this time of year either. The foot of snow we got last night here in Michigan is beautiful and makes me prance around like a six year old, but if it happens again this Saturday I'll be singing a different tune. Holiday travel also comes with lots of logistics to handle, anything from packing to buying tickets, or the standard drive to Chicago to wait in line at the Passport agency for extra pages because the Egyptian Consulate won't put a visa on the one blank page you have and you can't buy the visa at the airport because you're flying into Israel and taking the bus through a non-major point of entry. Good times.

But, at the end of the day, I can't wait. My passport came back today, my sister safely made it to Jerusalem, and the weather forecast for Saturday is free and clear. And while I may be out of the country again this holiday season, I'm thankful that this time around I'll be spending it with family. And baby Jesus. And the pyramids.