As we have been traveling about we have learned many things that we wish people would have told us before. Things to enjoy. Things to watch out for. Things to help us understand better. So, as we learn them, or think we learn them, we put them up here. Feel free to agree, disagree or add to. When your home has wheels you are aware of being on a journey. All about us is on a journey, what we know, what we love and our awareness of who we are.
A quick word on travelling to different cultures in general. I love experiencing different cultures. It is like a latent part of my mind and my imagination come alive. When a woman leans forward to kiss my cheeks, when a man I have never met insists upon standing uncomfortably close as we talk or when I see a woman on a hot day hanging up clothes on the line while wearing only a bra and unders. I say to myself, “I am definitely not in Kansas any more”. I LOVE IT. I have learned something new. “People kiss on the cheeks 3 times in some parts of Switzerland as opposed to twice where I just was in France”. “WOW, why do I feel so uncomfortable standing this close?” “I think my home culture is more modest, I wonder how much of our modesty is good and how much we might just have extra baggage around body issues, hmmmm.” And there I go. Learning new things. Asking questions. Not really looking for right and wrong. Not passing judgement about who is better but celebrating the diversity in our world. We are all different from each other. Not just from country to country but person to person.
We have a choice. I have a choice. I can throw off that insecure teenager complex of making my insecure self feel better about me by putting down anyone who is different and stand in amazement at this beautifully rich and diverse world I live in. We can stop looking for McDonalds, supermarkets and Coca Cola. Lets go into that run down cafe, that smelly fish market or drink Kofola (communist coke).
We can stop fearing “other” or just anything different. The news thrives on creating fear. We think about launching out and we are bombarded with stories of pirates, kidnapping and strange diseases when the countries we come from could very easily be more dangerous than most we are going to. It is just plain fear of the unknown and it keeps us from living.
Live life.
Love people.
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