I write a lot of narrative writing and poetry on my blog, and of course my technical writing, but I haven’t written anything personal in a direct way other than the short post on Language Learning as an Adult. I wanted to write a little bit about some of my travel experiences in a clear way and why I choose to travel to the places I do and what motivates me to and continue doing it as the years have gone on. I’m certainly not the most well traveled person on earth, or even the most well traveled person likely to read this, but it’s something close to my heart so I wanted to write about it.
I had only traveled a little bit outside of the country until I was about 24 and already in graduate school. Most of our family vacations evolved as a semi-family reunion (often with a lot of friends) to Colorado for 2-4 weeks every year. 2 weeks for the working adults and majority of the family, and 4 weeks for my brother, my cousin, my grandpa, and I. My grandfather wanted to get us in touch with nature and share some things that he valued with us, and I’ve always been greatly appreciative of the time I spent with him. I never took up hunting like he always wanted, but I’m definitely an adventurous person now, so it helped evolve me into the person I am today.
Despite those travels, international travel wasn’t something our family really did. We took a trip to Mexico and another to Jamaica, but these trips were shorter trips; as it was what was in our family’s budget at the time. However this all changed when I got to graduate school. My mom was working for an airline so I had flight benefits, and in graduate school I had summers off, and when I reached the stage of working on my research, essentially could work from anywhere.
My first trip to Spain was not a solo trip, or well, it was a solo trip to meet a friend from graduate school. One of my roommates in graduate school was a Spanish guy, who I’m still close with, and he went back to Barcelona to do field work for his Anthropology degree. He was studying unconventional types of organizational structure in politics and governance in Barcelona, so I went there to meet him. I ended up getting to spend some time at one of the headquarters of such an organization and got to have a lot of interesting discussions on a type of research and work that was (in my opinion) much more interesting than my own 🙂 For some closure to the anecdote after my buddy graduated he ended up moving to Spain and working for these organizations. During this trip there was some type of fire festival (either specific to Barcelona or Catalonia); which I tried to find the name of couldn’t recall. I also saw the Sagrada Familia under construction which was cool. Some photos of Barcelona and the festival are below:
In the years that followed I took a lot of solo trips to a pretty diverse assortment of countries and continents, and one road trip with an ex girlfriend to Montana (this was to complete a dream I had always had to visit there, because A River Runs Through It is my favorite piece of writing). Ecuador was my first solo trip, and I’ve been to a lot of countries in South America and Asia and Africa which has been really eye opening. Some countries straddling the line between East and West as well. I went back to Spain twice and also visited Portugal and Bulgaria. The solo trips were maybe motivated by wanting to experience new cultures, but I also think there was a little bit of running away from things. To this day I still really don’t know what; but I don’t think that sentiment is that atypical. I met a lot of people in hostels and backpacking that seemed to be running away from things; sometimes for a week, sometimes for a year, sometimes forever.
I’m headed to Europe in just under a month, and I’m pretty excited. I usually travel fairly frequently, but the last international trip I did was Rio de Janeiro in January of last year (which fortunately was incredible as I got to see a lot of highlights and use my recent Portuguese skills). This time it will be to Italy and Spain (where one of my younger cousins is getting married). It’s a new part of Spain that I haven’t been to yet, and I’ve never been to Italy at all, so going to Rome and Florence. I might also swing a visit to Barcelona to see that same Spanish friend (just to bring it all back home). This trip is really special because it’s for my cousin, and also my family will be going as well as my aunt and uncle and their family.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve thought a lot about the importance of place (which I think is reflected in a lot of the other things I’ve written on this blog). I was born outside of Texas originally, but have lived here the vast majority of my life, so it holds a special sentimental value to me. There’s a lot of great things here; great food, desert landscapes, and I like the people, but I’ve always been sort of drawn to move away if I got the opportunity. If only to try something different. I used to have some plans to move to Spain but have sidelined those. I think I’m a more sentimental person than most, so I don’t really know if I’ll ever leave, but It’s fun to think about alternative universes where I live in a different, and more exotic place. This might be the same nagging feeling to run away, though.
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