I figured I should probably post a little note sharing why I love… no, scratch that….why I am completely and utterly consumed with the need to travel.
I’ve been trying very hard to remember when I consciously realized that I got the travel bug–and I do mean bug, there is absolutely no way to shake it, the only way to cure it is to feed it–but it was so long ago, that I’ll just start with the earliest experience that I remember.
One day, when I was thirteen, my mother decided that she was going to take my siblings and I on a 6 month trip around Europe. Naturally, I was ecstatic! However, this trip never ended up happening. Instead, we took a ten-week trip around the United States. I was not excited about this. All I could think about was how I was going to be stuck with my family in a van for the next two and a half months staying at various KOA Kamping grounds and family friends’ houses, and stopping at every museum we passed. Hell, right?
We began in Torrance, CA in August of 2003 and drove all the way up to Seattle, then backwards on the Lewis and Clark trail, then to Maine, then down to the Florida Keys (stopping at Disneyworld–obviously), then through the southern states back to California. I was pleased to find that this was one of the most influential trips for me. It made me realize how much I truly thrived on new experiences, learning about the place I’m in, and meeting new people. Through this trip, I was able to see, in person, so many historical sights that I had learned about before. Learning things this way is so different, you see, because then it’s real. If you just history read in a book, it is hard to imagine that these events actually happened. However, if you can actually see where these events took place and see how the area has been affected, history seems so much more alive. (probably the reason that 3 out of the 4 of us have studied history in college)
This next part is a little fuzzy–I’m not quite sure why I decided to learn French, but I remember taking my mom’s old French books off the shelf and attempted to teach myself. I think the leading reason for my desire to learn French was because it was different. Everyone took Spanish, and I wanted to be original. Maybe I remembered somewhere that one of our family friends was Swiss, and I wanted to communicate with her. Or maybe it was because my mom knew French, and I wanted to speak with her, like a secret language around my family. Regardless, my mom saw that I was making an effort, so when I was 14 (a year after this big trip), I enrolled in a French class at the local community college. My mother promised me that if I took four semesters and got good grades, she would send me to live with that aforementioned family friend in Switzerland for a month! Naturally, I worked very hard and when I was 16, I hopped on a plane by myself and headed to Switzerland!
Those next five weeks that I spent there were some of the most life-changing times of my life. I first learned what it meant to be independent, as I spent every afternoon alone, wandering the streets and going to museums and taking public transportation and people watching. It was like a completely different world from southern California, and I loved it. I adored spending time in a place that was unfamiliar. One of my most memorable experiences was eating lunch at a cafe across the lake from Switzerland in Evian, France. I was so used to eating and leaving within 30 minutes, but the waiter just was not attentive to me, and I ended up sitting there for almost two hours. I was so frustrated, but it forced me to take a few seconds to relax and enjoy–something unknown to southern Californians. It was really refreshing.
When I got back to America, all I wanted was to go back to Europe. So, I started to learn Spanish, just so I could go visit Spain. Finances did not allow me to go the next year, but I was determined to go back. It took a couple years, and when I was a senior in college, I studied abroad at Oxford University for a semester. THAT was the most amazing place I’ve ever been, and the only love of my life. There is no way I could possibly do justice in writing to my experience in Oxford, but I’ll try. It was incredible. It changed me. I got to learn who I was, stripped of all influences that I thought defined me back home. I got to learn things in a place with tutors who challenged me to think for myself, and not just write papers that appeased the instructor. Not to mention, it was the most lovely and enchanting place I have ever been.
Outside of just living in Oxford, I got to travel all over a ton! I went to Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Chianti, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Belfast, , Edinburgh, and of course, London a few times. I think that all these little trips taught me the most that semester. I was able to recognize the diversity of the world first-hand by meeting so many different people, which caused me to completely and truly understand that another’s opinion and humanity is equal to mine. Those encounters show me how wonderful life is.
Each individual is important, and that’s so easy to forget a lot of the time because we tend to forget that people still exist outside of our own sphere of friends and acquaintances. Each person we pass on the street has a life that existed before we saw them and will continue to exist when they leave our lives and we never think of them again. Traveling, I think, forces me to think about these people and realize that I am just one person in a world of so many more perspectives and ideas. When I travel, it is impossible to not be humbled by this idea. How could I possibly go forward in life with an air of arrogance and pride in my own self after experiencing other parts of the world?
International traveling is not the only way to go about learning about the world around you. While I prefer it, there are still thousands of opportunities daily to experience something new. It is just important to leave your comfort zone and recognize the humanity and significance in every single person you encounter, and that is just as easily done in your own city.
The world is too big, and we are but little things, trying to assure our place in the history books. The truth is that we really are not important. It’s lonely, it’s scary, but it’s real, and everyone is in the same boat. All the people I meet, even though they have had different upbringings that me, and therefore have different opinions and values. But we’re the same, in a way, as we all are surviving in the same world, living our separate lives devoid of meaning, and trying to find something that keeps us from slipping into a comatose state of stagnation. I think that’s what gets me through it; because I know I’m not the only one–there are millions of pathetic little humans like me, and we’re all trying to make something of our meager existences.
Traveling is my oxygen. It revives me. It shows me people and experiences that are so new and different to me. It proves to me that there is no reason to be complacent in a small suburb of Los Angeles, but I should seek out new things all the time, and never stop forgetting the humanity in every single person. Experiencing diversity of the planet is so stimulating, and seeing it first hand helps me to not forget that it is real and beautiful. In essence, traveling shows me that life is beautiful.
she was an american girl 