More on traveling

Before 2009, I had never left the country. I had been a Spanish speaker since my adolescence but I still had never left the country – not even a trip to Mexico. I still haven’t been to Mexico. The other day, I realized that post-2009, I have traveled out of the country at least once a year, in the spring or summer. I feel very fortunate...In 2009, I was all over South America for the summer. 2010 I was in the Philippines. Philippines again in 2011. 2012 there was a brief stint in the very southern cone of the American continents, and 2013 was back to the tropics in the lovely little country of Panama.

I don’t know how I am gonna do it, but I’m really gonna try to leave the country before starting up school in the fall.  Sometimes I feel like traveling is overrated – and it kinda is. Sometimes I feel like traveling is good and nice for the sheer fact that it makes me miss home – California. Meaning, my friends, my foods, having my own kitchen/coffee, my BIKE. It’s not that I couldn’t have all these things in other countries; I definitely could. But that would entail living there. And, I guess I am just not there yet.

I wonder what’s keeping me from living in another country. Maybe it’s fear – fear that I wouldn’t get a nice job, or that I’d like it too much and never come home, or maybe fear that I’ll miss my loved ones too much. And it’s funny – because what ever it is that has kept me from living somewhere else sure is strong. Maybe it really is that the people I love are here, and the idea of building a new circle of friends and community feels daunting. Traveling is a different story – you meet people…come and go…see and leave. It’s a fleeting experience, which is both fun and disconnected.

So what’s in store for 2014? Not sure, but I have the feeling that this might be the first spring/summer where I don’t travel anywhere…but who knows...Mexico? Back to Colombia? Puerto Rico? I still can’t pull off going to Europe, so it seems like Latin America may be calling me back. We’ll see.

Choroni, Venezuela