On Traveling...

Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about?  It just makes me feel glad to be alive-- it's such an interesting world.

--Lucy Maud Montgomery

The splendid corner of the globe that I was fortunate enough to travel around is really a marvelous place.  From the moment I left my family at  the departure security gates, I was venturing into territory that I had never trekked, let alone alone.  It was a semester of 'growing up' in that respect; I made my first journey across the Atlantic alone, I planned and budgeted trips in France and even to other countries alone, and I exclusively 'chose my own adventure' for this semester.  Even after all my adventures, I still find travel an immense privilege. 

Travel is first of all the sights, for me, but surely it engages all five senses and each one adds a piece to the complex puzzle presented when you step into a new place.  I'd say after that, I pick up on the sounds: in a city, it's the dialects enveloping me, the tone of voice used with a mother, or a comrade, or a dog, the efficiency of car mufflers on the road, the new variation on an ambulance's whine.  In a more remote place, it's the wind in the trees, or the lapping waterfront hush, the music from a church or the methodical tapping of a hammer hard at work.  When you travel, you get off a train and immediately enter a scene where lives whirl around in daily routine.  What's foreign suddenly becomes strikingly wonderful, and, if you give it enough time, normal.  This is what I love about traveling.
 
Traveling is never a solo experience, unless of course you lock yourself into your hotel room and see as much from your window as possible (and even then you would have had to talk to the hotelier...?).  Traveling is about intersecting my life with people I would never otherwise meet.  These people can teach you more about where you are visiting than looking at all the Eiffel Towers and Colosseums in the vicinity.  During this semester, it was the Italian men I met over dinner in Florence that taught me about Italian hospitality; the crepe stand owner in Paris that gave me hope that some people still do love what they do; the robust women in the jewish bakery in Rome that allowed me a glimpse into a unique community that is alive and well; the frizzy-haired scholar in Aix-Les-Bains who taught me how the past and present can mix in wonderful ways; the ladies in Lyon that I talked to after dinner that taught me how interconnected France really is.

So you always do what the locals do, whether than means sitting at a cafe in Paris for hours (even when you could be touring Notre Dame, and climbing the Eiffel Tower, and....!).  It means waiting in line (and then shoving your way to the front of this line like all the others) for the chance to eat at the best restaurant in Florence.  For me, traveling is not all tourism.  Traveling is seeing and experiencing a few things well.

No doubt, it's better shared with someone else, even if you don't think so at first.  If anything, you bring along someone else for safety, for more split bills, and for someone to confirm that you really were there and you really did see that and he really did say that to you. :)  Not to mention, other people have a way of pointing out things you never would have noticed.  I'm a firm believer that good things are even better when they can be shared, not the opposite!

And of course, in reflecting on traveling, I'd be a failure if I failed to mention this one thing: adventure is found in not knowing what is going to happen next.  In traveling, you can look up all the addresses, know all the hours, memorize all the maps, and you still won't be prepared for where you're going.  Leave room for adventure.  Know things won't go accordingly to plan most times, but that's where the true adventure lies, and that is what you are signing up for, like it or not!  Not to mention, when you overcome an inconvenience in another place, you gain 100 points in healthy self-confidence.

Finally, and most importantly, traveling truly does allow us to know God better.  It's true-- we live in an interesting world, filled with interesting people.  And any traveling, whether across town or across borders or across seas, is an unrivaled opportunity to know a God who is altogether diverse, complex, creative, sovereign, and present.    It's always worth it.

He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. 

Joshua 24:17