A Brief Introduction to the Life of Abby Lynn

Hello everyone!

My name is Abby Lynn Oettinger and I’m just your average small town girl from Northern Wisconsin. I have one older brother (who happened to pick out my name). My favorite season is Fall because who doesn’t love football, bonfires, and pumpkin patches. Summer is a close second though, because my birthday is the summer solstice (most years) and lake cookout days are hard to beat, especially when you friends are great at grilling. I play intramural hockey at college and skating is honestly my therapy. I find stargazing extremely calming as well. I adore going to concerts and my hometown hosts Hodag Country Fest (if you don’t know what a Hodag is, look it up; it’s pretty cool, there’s a Scooby-Doo about it). I love photos where no one’s looking because they capture the true essence of the moment. I love trying foods that are from different cultures, but in reality, I just love food in general.

I recently graduated from the University of North Dakota with my Bachelor in Arts with majors in International Studies and German, a minor in Criminal Justice, and a Peace Corps Prep certificate. I loved it at UND and I meet some incredible people and I have an amazing circle of friends because of it. Oh, and I’m an alumna of Pi Beta Phi.

TRAVELING IS MY PASSION. If I could go anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted, people would rarely see me, besides in pictures. I have been to more than half of the states in the US and I’m currently working on conquering the rest. As far as other countries go, I’ve been to the Bahamas, Canada, England, Mexico, Turks & Caicos, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Montenegro, Morocco, Ghana, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. So I’ve been to four continents so far and my goal is to get to all seven continents before I’m 30.

Coming full circle now, the traveling brings me to why I created this blog. I studied abroad on, GET THIS, a ship! How cool is that? I was onboard the MV World Odyssey. I had some amazing adventures that I wrote about to share with you all.

My next step is moving to Europe, more specifically Lithuania, in order to attend Vilnius University to pursue my Master of English Studies (Linguistics). My goal is to experience and travel as much as possible in the next two years, which will hopefully lead to some great adventures and stories.

I was very apprehensive at first about blogging. I’ve thought about creating one before, but the normal concerns were always in the back of my head. These concerns include, but are not limited to: what would I talked about, what if I don’t have enough to say, and what if no one can relate. I ended up really enjoying it after Semester at Sea, so I thought, “hey, why not continue it when I move?”. So, here am I, continuing to write for all you beautiful souls, because this is the experience of a lifetime for me and like anything I do, I’m scared at first, but “all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage” (Matt Damon or Benjamin Mee), so why not take this leap with me as I live my best life possible? Here we go!