Pack Your Bags

I have my appropriate sized carry on and my boarding pass, and I know the precise location of my passport – so why am I getting the first date butterflies? You may believe it’s the flight, that I am scared of disaster. No, of course not, I’ve flown dozens of times.

I know what it is. The feeling is my knowing that in a few short hours I’ll be somewhere else – somewhere different, somewhere new, and somewhere real.

I believe travel is magical.

As I walk the streets of Bali, Indonesia in small villages such as Ubud, Nusa Dua and Kuta Beach the images are pulled straight out of a National Geographic magazine. Young women, dirty and barefoot, lie across sidewalks begging for money. Their garments, covered with sporadic holes and caked in dust, swaddle the infants they so badly need to feed. Immediately I, the guilty and humbled tourist, reach into my pocket pulling out a few thousand Rupiah. The paper bills, only adding up to a few American dollars, provide a small fortune to the women in the gutter.

Outside the poverty-stricken towns and disease-ridden markets stand beautiful oceanfront temples, thousands of years old. Beautiful beaches with sand white as snow and soft as cashmere beckon the crystal waves to lap their deliciousness. With tropical plants always in bloom and wild monkeys gallivanting around, the views of Bali are absolutely breathtaking.

Australia: the land where you quickly become everyone’s “mate” and the locals drive cautiously, watching out for kangaroos, just as Americans might for deer. Beautiful people with infectious, yet indecipherable accents parade down sidewalks with you. The beaches here provide an exceptionally different atmosphere than beaches in America. It is quite shocking, yet incredibly common to stumble upon a nude beach anytime your toes hit the sand. The bikini-clad are instantaneously picked out as foreigners; finger points and giggles are aimed at those with tops still on.

The most bewitching characteristic of traveling abroad is experiencing and participating in different ways of celebration. Easter Sunday in Florence, Italy, is not your typical Easter egg hunt. Fireworks crack and scream, their smoke crawling and curling upward around the walls of surrounding cathedrals. Ringing in the New Year in the streets of Ubeda, Spain and seeing people falling to their knees in horror the day the Pope died in Rome have proved to be mesmerizing spectacles.

I believe the things I’ve seen and the amazing people I have met while traveling have definitely cast a life altering light on my path. Of course the everyday convenience of life in America is comforting, but experiencing things that take you out of your comfort zone seem to be the most worthwhile in retrospect.

Travel is more than the thousands of pictures I’ve taken. It is more than the stamps in my passport. It's believing that there is a world out there and knowing that I am taking every chance I can to see it.