I spent my high school years secretly dreaming about and planning my eventual escape to Europe or Down Under, with a future jump to Africa. I cut out pictures of these places and placed them on the inside of my closet doors, inside my school notebooks, under the lid of my trunk. I always planned to live outside of the U.S. for extended periods of time and I was going to do it no matter what. And I would be starting with Europe or Australia.
Climbing the columns in Eugene, Oregon, is a blast.
I had never met any Australians and the Europeans I had run into were few and far between, so I had a lot of questions about who they were and what happened in their countries. Like, why did the British and the Australians have accents so much better, so much more sophisticated, than the ones in the U.S.? Why weren’t we all talking like the British? What was it like to live with a royal family in charge of things? Were they in charge of things? And weren’t we past the whole royal family thing anyway? It was the 2oth century after all. And was the Australian bush really as dangerous as it sounded? Did people still go on walkabouts for months or years at a time? If I went to Australia, could I, too, go on a walkabout? How would that work exactly?
And Europe, you know, had so many different cultures, languages and foods all mixed in together. In one great, but small-enough-to-travel-through-easily, spot. How many countries could you hit in how short of a time? How many different types of food could you try out on one trip? Could you really get from Spain to, say, Germany by car in less time than it might take to get from San Francisco to L.A.? Why were some of the countries smaller than U.S. states? I mean, in the U.S. you could hop on a plane, be on it for 5 or 6 hours, land on the other side of the country, but still be in the same country and culture. Kind of boring, really. It was so hard to conceive of having three or four different countries as close to you as your nearest neighboring state. That would be sweet!
So, you see, there was a lot of intrigue there. Mystery. Curiosity. The unknown was calling to me.
Standing on statues in national parks in Korea is frowned upon severely. My friend and I were chased away by highly disapproving, unhappy guards in the park near Daejeon.
In the end, though, life took me down different roads, roads I hadn’t considered traversing. Like when we moved from the South to Colorado in the middle of high school and I fell in love with the Rocky Mountains. Or when I decided I needed to get closer to the East Coast and went to college in Ohio, moving to Pennsylvania afterwards. Or the moment I thought that Seattle sounded like a good idea, went there and developed what has become a lifelong affair with the bicycle.
I spent a good ten years checking out the best that the U.S. has to offer and ended up living in 11 different states in total. But the San Francisco Bay Area is, in fact, my true home, the home where my heart feels most content.
Actually, moving to San Francisco changed my entire life because that was where a random sequence of events and contacts put me on my international travel track, only not to Europe or to Australia. I started instead with South Korea, then later lived in China with a final stopover in Indonesia (so lovely!). In recent years, I’ve been diving into Latin American culture and have lived in Nicaragua, Peru and Colombia.
The remnants and effects of colonialism are visible all over Latin America (and not always in a good way). But Granada, Nicaragua, has some beautiful Spanish architecture.
What’s so strange about it all is that I never thought about going to Asia or to Latin America when I was in high school. It just never occured to me. Probably because I grew up (mostly) in Houston, Texas, and was surrounded by people from all over Asia and Central and South America. The cultures were interesting, the food was fantastic, the people were great, but the mystery just wasn’t there. Or so I thought!
How wrong I was. You never truly know and understand a culture until you have lived there. Being around people from that country isn’t enough. Just visiting that country isn’t enough. You need to dig into the place, meet the people, explore the society, see what’s going on every day. You need to research and read and interact and try out new things that may not even exist where you came from. That’s what I do and it fulfills me in so many ways. Plus, Latin America has captured my full attention, has brought me so many lessons (some good, some difficult, and some a little bit strange) and has taken over a piece of my heart in an unexpected and delightful way.
I haven’t made it yet to Europe, Australia or New Zealand. But they’re still on the list. For now, my adventure continues in Central and South America and it’s a blast!
