About

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Hey, I’m Addie!

Or should I say what is up, my fellow youths? I’m Addie, the twenty-something millennial grandma that is the face and voice behind this blog, and I am dreadfully helpless when it comes to writing about pages.

Like every other travel blogger out there, I was born and raised in a small, corn-loving town in the Midwest, and always had hopes and dreams of leaving to move to the ‘big city’. Since graduating high school, I’ve moved to London for six months before running back home (the big city and I, it turns out, do not get along), spent two years successfully living and studying in small-town Scotland, and traveled to more than 18 different countries.

Addie Abroad

I first started travel blogging in the fall of 2015, though I had exactly zero idea what I was doing. After a classic identity crisis when I realized that this was, like, a thing you could actually take seriously, I moved EVERYTHING over to a new, self-hosted website and called it Addie Abroad.

It’s been a real journey running this blog over the past few years, and I’ve made a LOT of mistakes along the way (I am STILL trying to replace photos in blog posts that were lost during the Big Move). But I’m learning as I go along, and hopefully, I can make this thing pretty awesome in the long run.

For now, the goal is to keep things real and dish out major advice on studying abroad, traveling on a budget, getting off-the-beaten-path, and taking adventures that no one else feels like sharing.

But Addie, How did you get to be so adventurous?

Well okay, let’s set a few things straight first. I am not adventurous. In fact, I’m probably the most anxious person you’ll ever meet. I just like to trick people into thinking I’m adventurous.

But anyways… that’s besides the point. What you want to know is how and why I came to travel so much. So here goes.

My first plane flight was at six months old to go visit relatives in Switzerland. Apparently, I was an ideal baby to take on a plane–I had a habit of not crying. So was I born to travel? You could certainly make the case for it…

My entire childhood, my parents made it a priority to take my siblings and I traveling. My mother took us on yearly trips to Captiva Island, Florida, and my father always brought one of us along on his business trips (which is how I managed to make it to both Japan and China twice before I even started high school).

I don’t think I truly embraced by wanderlust-filled side until I graduated, though, at which point I had the chance to start planning my own trips and feel the serious adrenaline that comes with that (see? I told you I’m not adventurous! I get adrenaline from planning things). After unsuccessfully trying out the big city life in London, I moved back home for six months and traveled around North America trying to ‘find myself’. Surprisingly enough, travel really seemed to help with that. So I haven’t really stopped yet.

The Move to Scotland

I decided to try the whole ‘moving abroad for university’ thing one more time in the fall of 2016, and this time it actually worked out. You can currently find me walking around my tiny Scottish town, attending lectures, and booking plane tickets out of Edinburgh for over ambitious weekend getaways.

New here?

Be sure to check out these blog posts to get a taste of me, myself, and the odd budget travel tip:

• On Returns (And the Tube)
• How to Kick A** At Weekend Trips While You’re Studying Abroad
• 25 Things No One Tells You About Studying Abroad in Scotland

Any questions?

Head on over to my contact page!