Sometimes I feel like I was born to travel. I don’t mind airports and time changes. Feeling out of place and not understanding people is pretty normal for me. I can make do with minimal personal hygiene (even though it's not my top preference) and I will try about almost anything as long as it doesn’t kill me. I can deal with getting lost in a city if I have a map and a language dictionary. As much as it is the thrill of being in a new place, travel has brought a lot of unexpected richness in my life.
· Travel has widened my sensory experience. Often when we go outside the confines of our everyday, we are given an opportunity to a new way of seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting. I've often joked that my "love language" is trying new things. I haven't loved everything that I've tried but I think I have a pretty open mind and willing spirit just to jump into "whatever" and hope for the best :) One of my favorite ways to experience a culture is to try the local food- even if it is really strange like snake wine.
(Notice how most of my really weird food experiences were in China!)
· Travel has stretched my ability to live simply. Going beyond the borders of what was comfortable for me forced me adapt to the unknown and the unpredictable. I learned that I didn’t need much in this life, and that richness is found in the essentials and not luxury. Living over in Europe where the pace of life is completely different than the US has changed me too- I love the convenience of so many things in the states (and can't wait to experience them in a few weeks!) but I've learned I can also easily live in a place where life shuts down on Sunday and after 6pm. I've learned to be efficient in getting things done and really just letting things go that are not really necessary. Cesare Pavese said once, “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” Exactly.
· Travel has broadened my understanding of the world. Traveling grounds me in the realities of the bigger world we live in. It broadens my heart and soul to what I welcome as good and it puts me in touch with pain and suffering that I am often shielded from. It helps me see my prejudices and bigotry that I don’t realize I have. It also gives me a more holistic perspective of the culture I grew up in and the culture I am immersed in now. My context for living has changed. Samuel Johnson puts it well, “Traveling helps regulate our imaginations by reality, instead of thinking how things may be, we see them as they are.”
· Travel has deepened parts of me I wouldn’t have otherwise tapped into. There’s something about travel that unmasks and unravels our inner being. I have traveled on my own, traveled with some great friends and traveled with strangers, who through the adventure end up becoming friends. I've learned a lot about myself in all the types of travel I've done, learned a lot about my friends and bonded with complete strangers. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our life here on earth IS a journey and that we are travelling towards a destination, which I call My True Home. Perhaps deep within we are all nomads and sojourners who have lost touch of what travel does to us because these days, we want nothing more than to stay put, be stable and lock in on the promise of security for ourselves and our families. But travel pulls away that veil and reminds us that THIS isn’t it. There are better things ahead. We don’t fully know or comprehend what is over there, but we hope.
I feel very blessed with all the travel opportunities I've had. This year alone, I've been in 13 different countries and have seen a ton of Germany. Some months, I was only home one weekend! As much as I LOVE to travel, that was also a bit exhausting- I don't know how people who travel for a year at a time do it! I'm really hoping in the upcoming year to spend some of my time traveling to places in the eastern block countries doing some mission trips to orphanages and to other missionaries serving in those areas. My pastor from church has been in Europe for a while and has some partnerships with missionaries living in Romania, Czech and Poland and I'm praying for opportunities to serve and build relationships with people and organizations.
I feel very blessed with all the travel opportunities I've had. This year alone, I've been in 13 different countries and have seen a ton of Germany. Some months, I was only home one weekend! As much as I LOVE to travel, that was also a bit exhausting- I don't know how people who travel for a year at a time do it! I'm really hoping in the upcoming year to spend some of my time traveling to places in the eastern block countries doing some mission trips to orphanages and to other missionaries serving in those areas. My pastor from church has been in Europe for a while and has some partnerships with missionaries living in Romania, Czech and Poland and I'm praying for opportunities to serve and build relationships with people and organizations.
