OFF TO COLOMBIA & CUBA

When you read this, from the comfort of your own home, please bare with me… Cause at this very moment I’ll be sweating my pants. Not just because I’m taking off to a warm place, but moreover because I am going to make a big trip! So exciting…

If you’ve been following me for a while, you may have read that I went to Thailand last year. That was my first backpack trip, very exciting. It was a trip I had been looking forward to for a long while, but also a trip that I felt like I had to do. Before I went to Thailand I had never backpacked and I really felt the urge to escape my life for a while. Not because my life wasn’t exciting enough, but maybe just because it was so exciting. I had always been busy with school. A study in Psychology, a study in Allround Styling, a job as a psychologist, a job as a visual merchandiser. During the summer of 2014 I would, for the very fist time, have no study and no job (besides my blog). It was the perfect timing for me to go abroad. At least, that’s what I thought…

However, when I had only been in Bangkok for one day it felt like I had been there for two weeks. My travel buddies said that they felt exactly the same way. It’s supposed to be one of the traveler’s syndromes to feel like that. Ok… However, it only took me a week to know that Thailand was just not the place for me and this was not the right timing at all! Before I knew, I had booked a flight back to Amsterdam and didn’t even finish my trip, for I was about to go to Bali as well. Hmm, I didn’t make it there.

And now… I am making a second big trip. Friends were stunned. “Are you going to backpack again, Larissa? You said it didn’t please you last time. Why go again?” I’ll try to explain… When I went to Thailand (and supposedly Bali) I wanted to go there to be free. From my study in Psychology I should’ve know that this was just a paradoxe. How free is one who wants to be free so badly that he or she has to burn bridges? Freedom is the one thing you cannot force… And so I felt trapped. The circumstances at this moment are totally different. My feelings too, are very different. Because the best part about all this right now, is that I feel free already.

Back home I have a lovely job (my own business in blogging, which is very free in itself), I have loving & caring family and friends, I have some exciting projects waiting for me when I come back, I have a boyfriend who is also making a trip, and I totally look forward to the places I am visiting. Although I am very anxious about what this trip will bring me, I am, above all, thankful for what I have waiting in the end and happy & open to experience all that’s coming my way.

“For one to be free,
one should not want to be, one should just be…”

My blog will be updated regularly in the meantime, for I have worked my ass off in the weeks before my departure, so there are a lot of outfit posts waiting ahead. If you want to follow my doings in Colombia & Cuba from close by, check out my instagram: @larissabruin and snapchat: larissabruin, cause I will be updating both as much as possible depending on the internet services.

See you in Colombia & Cuba!

In these photos: Pepe Jeans beach bag* / H&M straw hat / Pepe Jeans bikini* / Pepe Jeans sunnies* / Pepe Jeans platform trainers*
All items with * were gifted to me