2. Going places

    Although Paul Bowles is noted as a traveler of all places, I found his comments concerning Euro-American travel most pertinent to a class like this, although his descriptions of other places, like the Sahara, are still beautiful expositions of his life and travel aesthetic.

    Bowles comments that Europe has a particular pull for Americans that other places do not. It has, as he calls it, a "tribal past" for Americans that other places simply cannot have. I'm a bit ambivalent towards this claim, but it's a nice foil to the ordinary contention (especially among Europeans) that American tourists are particularly noisy, "uncultured," or generally disrespectful.

    His remark makes me think about general travel trends. Americans tend to go touring to Europe. The average American tourist dreams of going to Paris or Madrid, not Zambia or Mongolia or Nauru, and it really seems like you have to go out of your way mentally to go to most non-Western places (although I've found that, practicalities considered, it is not always that much harder to go elsewhere). I'm sure a big part of Americans only touring the western world boils down to comfort, reliability and so forth. But I've always wondered: if Europe was as "underdeveloped" as Zambia or even, say, Egypt, to what extent would Americans still be driven to go to Europe? Put another way: How much does being part of the same cultural tradition play into the choice to travel, as opposed to notions of ease?

    I ponder such things because the attitudes of Americans, in my experience, tend to be both accepting and rejecting of European tradition at the same time. America likes to see itself as a very independent country, but at the same time many Americans really respect, often naively, what they perceive as European cultural magnificence, whether it's in architecture, food, language, or manners. (How many of us have had Little Italy became a huge part of a friend's New York trip?) In my experience, rarely have Americans told me that any notion of cultural connectedness plays into this respect. In other words, I've never heard anyone bemoan not being able to see England because it was what spawned American culture in the first place; rather, it's because England is simply older, or more cultured, or what have you. My speculations are in contrast to Bowles, when he says,

"I believe that what we Americans are seaching for, and thus the most important thing we canbring back with us, is something more all-embracing. I should call it a childhood--a personal childhood that has some relationship to the childhood of our culture."

If this is true, it must be happening on an imperceptible level. Maybe that's what he means.

    Anyway, I'd like to extract one more notion from Bowles' comments on American travel to Europe. The stereotypical European resident-American traveler relationship involves a "cultured" OR snotty European (depending on who you're talking to) constantly putting up with American boisterousness. Sometimes this relationship is spoken of by Americans in a way that is self-deprecating. On some level I think it speaks of a real cultural tension, however passive: that of Europe the old, orderly and wise, the receptacle of all things old and important; and America the unhistoric, the untamed, and yet disturbingly powerful.

    I remember reading recently that the British school system talks about the American Revolution only in the most passing manner, as just another colony lost throughout the ages, details unimportant in the greater scheme of things. American history, on the other hand, cannot but speak of European cultural forces if it wants to give any degree of accuracy to its own origin; it is dependent on Europe for its own definition in history. Whether this is a legitimate way to define who is more or less cultured, it seems to be the source from which events like the Europeans discounting Bowles as "just" a jazz composer stem from.

    OK. This is getting a lot longer than I thought, and I wanted to mention a few other things but I'll let them linger. I will mention one thing, though. Bowles' descriptions of the Sahara as a totally alien, self-referential space strike me as very similar to those of Brion Gysin's in the novel The Process...which is, to an extent, based on Gysin's own travels and is from about the same time period. In both cases do the writers refer to the Sahara as a place that will completely turn the traveler inside out...At any rate, it's worth a look for anyone who's drawn to that kind of culture.

When reviewing Twain’s Innocents Abroad, I related to his accounts in Italy in terms of physicality, but questioned where I “fit” in terms of heritage, identification, and overall being. When Twain visits Venice, he seems to establish the city as once a city of power, but although no longer one of central commerce exchange, still as a city that upholds its integrity in uniqueness.
 
When I traveled to Europe in high school, I most identified with my surroundings in Italy, mostly because I am—as you might have guessed from my name—Italian. Granted, my Italian side of the family has lived in the states for generations, we eat American-Italian food like breaded cauliflower, few family members speak the actual language, but at the same time, we pride ourselves with key “Italian values.” The family stays close together. My mother, of Polish-German descent, always jokes that my father used to utter the clichéd line of “Blood is thicker than water” when referring to the Giambra family. Our Italian side, whether through phonetic misunderstandings or social discourse, now pronounce our last name Gee-ahm-bra, but in Italy, it would most likely be pronounce Jahm-bra. Basically, I’m really American, and I guess I identify with my state (New Jersey) more than any other place, but in relation to the places I visited (Austria, France, and Italy), I found familiarity with Italy—probably because, somewhere down the road, one of my family members had been to or knew of one of the places I visited.
 
In Venice, I got the vibe of this “lost city.” As touristy as it seemed, I never experienced anything of the sort. To think that the gondola served as an actual use during Twain’s time still confuses me, but I loved it. Because of all of this tourism and lack of apparent modernization, I felt as though the city I experienced and the one Twain experienced were one in the same. I perceived a different take on Rome, for which he heavily gravitated on the grandness of religious influence and the passion for sacrifice and overall death by the people (hundreds of years before his visit). Although I did not connect to the accounts of death and dungeons in Venice, either, I could understand it more for some reason. From the lack of modernization (or appearance of it), the city specifically represents a capsule in time in which the past and present feel closer than in a giant, now more modernized city such as Rome, because of the refusal to break the “ambiance” that Venice seems to set, for instance, the beauty perceived from the moonlight (possibly also due to the lack of sky scrapers, modern-day families, etc.)? 
 
Mind you, I’ve never been to Rome, but on my excursions to Venice and Florence, I felt perfectly at ease with the people. At the time, I think I believed that I associated with the people because of the food, culture, and language, all of which I had been somewhat familiar with beforehand, but I think—because of my constructed identity—I allowed myself to look past the Italian people’s differences more so than the people from Austria or France. In that acceptance, I think I used Twain’s travel writing as a means of deciding which parts of the Italian culture I felt “one with” (gondola-riding) and other parts from which I distanced myself as simply being the “mere modern-day tourist from New Jersey” (the public killings).

Every time a plane rises something sets off in me. I can't explain it. I suppose all of a sudden I become reflective, pondering the excitement I feel for the next chapter in my life, or the jaded apathy I wonder if I shouldn't feel. Flying is isolating- no phones, no internet, not much movement- and really allows my mind the freedom to play within itself. Perhaps my too-sensitive imagination caused the problem, or maybe it was just growing up and finding something to be afraid of losing, but not too long ago flying began to make me anxious. “Where are the exits? What would I say if I got one phone call? Etc...” Very morbid, I know. Too bad I love traveling so much! I suppose then I figured out that anxiety is best dealt with unconsciously- which is now how I choose to spend most of my flights.

Perhaps this is my way of running away from what de Button describes as his accidentally bringing himself along with him in his travels. I pack everything, literally everything except what I brought, into storage and get hyped up for this adventure only to find I have to deal with my hang-ups along the way? My imagination, my images of this future, somehow included me packing and storing those away as well.

I did not come with many expectations, but I must admit I had a grand ol' time compiling my own subconscious stock-images of beautiful sights: late night dancing to heart-throbbing bass and losing my breath, huge smiles beside new friends I would make, sitting outside and conversing beneath my furrowed intellectual eyebrows with a professor. It rings too true for me that to some the imagination is the best medium for adventure, but as I have mentioned, my decision to come to Berlin was a purposeful crushing of the part of myself that thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and never moves.

On my arrival here I can not really say I wasn't expecting a confrontation with those peripheries of the painting, the things the artist doesn't care to represent. Examples including that my boyfriend of two years, D, and I don't know how to manage adjacent anxieties; I can't seem to keep ahold of my money; the German's really don't care if you couldn't read the sign they'll give you a ticket anyway; and holy hell, it's cold. My expectation of these matters are met with some apathy, some awe.

However, some find the most interesting parts of a pictorial representation lie in the process. Many memories, like pictures, tend to only show you the main, or intended, content. My first moments in Berlin, while getting off the plane, was a delicate portrait of my cigarette smoke disappearing into the sunrise over a foreign cityscape, soundtracked by the tense buzzing of my brain waiting for the moment when we find a cab. That said, I don't remember everything; I don't care to remember everything. It could have been everything I wanted, and for all intensive purposes, it was.

Not long before I arrived in Buenos Aires, I made a few last-ditch, desperate efforts to learn more about the country in which I planned to spend my next four months. However, these efforts barely scraped the surface, and being the visual thinker that I am, I found myself entranced by all sorts of images of the city and its inhabitants. One in particular stood out – the colorful, haphazard houses of La Boca.
 
Well, that’s not entirely true actually. There was no one image that held my gaze, but a mass of images of La Boca with different details and shot from various angles. Together they created my foreigner’s perception of the city – bold porteños speaking with both hands and mouths, passion pervading every inch of flesh and stone, and color everywhere all the time. Color, passion, life! Just what I needed after a truly arduous, testing semester in New York. Buenos Aires, with the colors of La Boca, would be my haven from a disenchanted existence in “the best city in the world.”
 
However, when I finally arrived in Buenos Aires – late and staying in an awful homestay (I switched into another two days later) – my vision began to crumble. It didn’t totally shatter until the next day when I visited La Boca on a bus tour with NYU. Just as colorful as I had imagined, but before my feet could even make contact with uneven cobblestone, my few minutes to explore were prefaced with the facts that La Boca is one of Buenos Aires poorest areas (with a villa – slum – not too far away) and theft is common. Well, no worries I guess. It still looks beautiful. But guess what? Those striking colors only exist there because they were left over from shipyards and lifted by the area’s habitants. And that interesting use of corrugated metal? It was scrap metal and is far from being the ideal material with which to build a house: in the summers the houses are way too hot, and in the winters they freeze.
 
I realized something in that instant that I can only really articulate now by lending from the words of Botton. Like his vision of Barbados, the “profusion of images… made it strangely harder for me to see the” Buenos Aires “I had come to find” (13). Writing this post late and having extra time to consider my vision of this city before I arrived and as it stand now, I understand that I can’t force my perceived notions of “my ideal city” on one which I have never visited and about which I know next to nothing. I wasn’t totally unaware of this back home in LA, but I didn’t want to face the truth. I thought I would be revived upon entering the city, more calm, happy and passionate than ever before. But the idea that I would be any different from how I usually am or that the city would accept me – a solo foreign particle – with arms wide open is absurd. Now that my original naïve vision has been crushed, I’m rebuilding and slowing piecing together a new one in which Buenos Aires is the subject, not myself. Keeping this in mind, I want to end with the quote from Botton that I plan to keep in mind during this semester: “…The state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy or condemn us to misery” (25).

After reading theory on anticipation by Alain de Botton  before travelling I can completely relate. However I think that there are so many things he is over looking. Of course seeing a picture or painting of a certain place is different than actually being there. Botton thinks that the “human factor” in which we overlook the role of the body and mind as “temperamental accomplices in the mission of appreciating [my] destination” that makes the real experience differ.  However what he doesn’t realize is this very same “human factor” gives us an understanding of a place that we simply cannot get from pieces of art. Our senses give us our own interpretation of a place. We finally do not see someone else’s representation of it. Botton seems to think that works of art are the ultimate truth, and that when we travel we somehow need to find or experience this truth. The following paragraph I found the most exemplary of this notion:

“The problem was not the the painting themselves lied—the place did offer some simplicity and joviality, some nice brick courtyards and a few serving women pouring milk—but rather that the promised gems were blended in a stew of ordinary images (restaurants, offices, uniform houses and feature fields) that the Dutch artists had never painted, and that made the experience of travelling in the country seem strangely diluted compared with an afternoon spent in the Dutch galleries of the Louvre, where the essence of Dutch beauty found itself collected in just a few rooms,” (18).

However the real thing is our own interpretation of it, not somebody else’s. We need this “human factor” of ourselves, our hunger, our fatigue, our sense of smell, our state of mind, and our past experiences to be able to really see a place. Works of art show only what the artist wants to show.  If Des Esseintes wanted to see the Holland of his imagination he shouldn’t have gone at all. But he wanted to go because he knew that experiencing it in reality would different than looking at a painting, especially one painted many years ago. Therefore in my opinion this “strange dilusion” that he experienced is what made Holland special because it was the true representation of that foreign country.

I chose the above picture because in Buenos Aires I am surprised by the amount of TGI Fridays there are here. How random is that?! However it does not feel like I am in has become part of the Argentinian culture

Before I came to Florence, I thought that coming here would push all of my anxieties and problems out of the way for a while, that it would be a completely blissful escape. Traveling is concentrated on, as Botton discusses, on the anticipation of the trip. Travel books talk about travel, but not about anything close to exactly what one feels while away from home, in a foreign place. Although I think that what Botton says is true, that the anxieties and problems don't leave you when you travel, you just find new ones, it just sounds more petty and ridiculous to have such problems in such a beautiful and historical place as Florence is. I did not, nor did the Florentians for that matter, think that it would be nearly as freezing cold as it has been for the past 10 days or so. Then, walking up 6 flights of stairs to my 'appartamento' after coming inside from the snow and wind is not exactly my idea of a good time. Neither is catching a cold that sends me to bed for 3 days, but it all sounds relatively trivial when I realize once again that I am in FLORENCE, for gods sake! Whenever I feel that way, I am comforted by the view from the six floors I walked up to see from my apartment window, the Florentine city landscape, particularly the Duomo. The fact that I can see the Duomo from my bedroom window (if I peer out a bit) and directly from my kitchen window, does not cease to amaze me. Also, I've realized that its the little things that make or break my day. A chocolate festival selling the most delicious hot chocolate I've ever tasted can make my day so much better, while struggling to change a doctors appointment on the phone can almost ruin my day.

On a different note, I have begun to feel more settled here in Florence, less lost and unaware of my surroundings, both physical and cultural. Classes have begun, which have made for a more regular kind of schedule, even though I am reluctant to get up just to head out into the blustery exterior world. Something about a schedule makes me feel more generally settled. Being a multi-tasking New Yorker, I like to be able to stop here and there on the way to or on the way home from class. It gives a sense of regularity. My Italian class is helping me to become better at conversational and colloquial Italian (which it should, being “Conversations in Italian” class), making me feel more comfortable and more prone to calling Florence my home.

 

Ever since I was a little girl, I loved traveling. It was easy for my family to travel because I enjoyed road trips and plane rides. Alain De Botton’s Art of Travel explains that “there is a psychological pleasure in this takeoff” (38). The takeoff has always been exciting for me because I anticipated the destination; I love that we have the freedom to go almost anywhere on this globe. During the takeoff, you are either on on your way to an unknown place, or returning to a familiar place with new stories.

However on January 24th, I felt differently when I took off from Newark airport. I watched New York City’s skyline get smaller and already started to miss it. The idea of separating from my favorite city for four months, made me realize that Florence isn’t a vacation, it will be my new home. I have traveled to Italy before so I had no anticipations or expectations before my flight. I kind of ignored the fact that I am going to be living among people that I cannot communicate with, and will have none of my close friends with me. My nerves just hit me when I saw other New York University students, and realized I had to go through the awkward encounters of freshman “Welcome Week” all over again. 

The story of Duc Des Esseintes, made me understand that no travel books or images of Florence could teach me everything I need to know about my experience. My first few days were different than others because I am in a home-stay in the residential areas of the city. I was quickly forced to figure out the bus system, the map and people I live with. In addition, I was not prepared for the sudden temperature drop to 21 degree’s and 2 inches of snow! While I was meeting other people and visited the NYU campus, I independently got to understand the beauty of my new home. 

I associated Florence with touristy images like the Duomo and Ponte Vechhio. However my home-stay father made time to show me and my roommate that there is much more in and around the city center. On our third night we drove to the past the main tourist stop, Piazzale Michelangelo to the top of the mountain to find the church, San Miniato al Monte. I have never been to a church at night. While we quietly passed the monks, I discovered that interior was full of the old mosaics I studied in my art history class. Because it was at night, I didn’t feel like a tourist when I stopped to take picture of the Florence’s sparkling skyline along the Arno River. The nervousness I felt on arrival has been replaced with a victorious feeling of claiming Florence to be my new hometown.

“Welcome to London,” said the pilot as I eagerly stepped off the plane. My legs ached, my eyes half open, my neck sore—all I wanted to do was get in bed. I dragged my bags through London’s Heathrow Airport. As I headed for the exit, I noticed all of the excited faces around me. Sure I was jet-lagged after the eleven-hour flight I had just taken from Los Angeles to London, but I definitely was not going to give up the opportunity to “turn [my] dreams of London into reality.” I had been to London on vacation with my family, but this time I was alone.  I was here for twenty-one hours and I was eager to start my four month long journey through Europe.

The sky was dark grey and rain began to drip down my back, but I was on a mission; nothing could stop me.  My day in London was amazing. I met up with my three friends, Rebecca, Talia, and Lauren who are studying in London for the semester. I could not wait to hear how they were doing, but insisted we first grab food. I was famished. They took me to a quaint pub and convinced me to order fish and chips. I mean I was in London after all. We finished eating and headed towards their dorm. As we walked the streets I was hit with a wave of grogginess. “C’mon, Push yourself Elana, you’re here for a day,” I repeatedly told myself. 

After tea and scones at Harrods we explored Piccadilly Circus. By eleven I was ready for bed so I headed back to the hotel I was staying at. Brotton discusses the idea that despite our anticipation, our actual happiness with, and in a place seems to be brief. As I lay in bed, reviewing the amazing day I had just had, I realized that Brotton is right, “the condition rarely endures for longer than ten minutes.” I had only spent a day in London and my excitement did not last for long, I was ready for my next adventure. I began to panic. Are the next four months going to be a waste? Am I going to forget everything? Will I appreciate it all? I then promised myself that from now on I would record my adventures in a journal. Maybe then I will be able to look back and revisit my experiences, for more than ten minutes at least. 

American Airlines flight 142 with service to London Heathrow was a blur. I put all my luggage under the seat in front of me, large carry on, personal item and all, took some Dramamine and a sleep aid, and fell asleep to the whir of the turbine outside my window. I woke up once when they served breakfast, and once again when they gave us what I think was dinner. I’m not quite positive, I still felt like a spooked cat cowering in my window seat. I’m singularly glad there was no passenger next to me, I am not sure I would have been in great shape for meaningless conversation.

When we landed, I was told, after aimless wandering around the shuttle bus terminal for a connection to Terminal 5 in London, that Heathrow closes after 11 and that all travelers that had overnight layovers must stay the night in one terminal under the surveillance of airport security. All I can comment about Heathrow is my displeasure at the quality of the design and my treatment I felt as if I were a sheep, corralled into one roped off area to be watched by wolves. If anything, it felt like what my idea of purgatory would be, a poorly lit, empty airport, with lonely travelers spread out on uncomfortably generic airport chairs, lost in the abyss that was the witching hour between dusk and dawn. Airport security patrolled up and down the aisles as if guarding the streets of a garish indoor city advertising currency exchange and stale fast food, its gates locked up against the loneliness the travelers seemed to emanate from the terminal. I slept very poorly, waking up every thirty minutes to a security officer walking by, heavy foot steps sending fantastically awful reverberations through my dreams. Needless to say I was very happy to exit that terminal promptly at 5 AM, and be well on my way to Terminal 5 and my next flight to Germany.

At this point my mental capacity for remembering things was at an absolute end. Communication was not at the top of my list of things I could perform without appearing drunk, and exhaustion had claimed my physical processes most important for survival. Thus reduced to a zombie, I boarded British Airways flight 990 with service to Berlin Tegel, and promptly fell asleep. The rest is even more of a blur, as the zombie disease continued to eat at my brain. My perception picked up small things: like my brief (subdued) panic at not being able to find the NYU representative at Tegel, exchanging my dollars to Euros for the first time, meeting some fellow students briefly and making a mental note to not speak too much because zombies don’t generally talk to their food, the shuttle and the bright cold morning sun, the resident assistant kindly reviewing check in procedure to me for the sake of propriety, only registering where my room was, getting lost and having to ask someone for directions to my room, struggling with my new front door, attempting to connect to the internet, failing, and then falling asleep with my face in my laptop and all my clothes from my travels still on for the next 6 hours.

In the morning I woke up in time for breakfast, served at around 8, though I was still suffering from jetlag and had to drag myself out of bed and into a cold shower to wake up fully. I stopped by the office, grabbed my little breakfast sack, and headed straight to Dylan’s and Andrea’s room to eat and start the day with them. We did a housing tour and a neighborhood tour, and then a trip to the academic center where I will be having class to go through orientation sessions on general things to know before we start class and met quite a few new and awesome people. I began to be more and more amazed at the actuality of what I was experiencing. I didn’t know what to expect before coming here and I definitely did not expect everything that I was able to take in now that I wasn’t so exhausted. The architecture was old, from before the Berlin wall fell, full of renovations and newer architecture overcoming post Cold War structures. The academic center itself was a renovated beer brewery, with a cobblestone courtyard, wrought iron fences, old brick buildings, but the restaurant we had lunch as a collective abroad class was very modern and classy, with chandeliers and shining wood bar and tables amongst the exposed brick and dark steel that made up the brewery’s intact structure. Absolutely beautiful and inspiring use of design in this kind was all over the city. I found it in the suspended steel platform staircase in the academic center, and again in the theater on campus. I am so excited to see more of the city and to see the redevelopment of a nation that has been so dedicated to a different kind of social infrastructure during the Cold War and during World War II. Almost as excited as I am to start learning more about the subway system here, and to learn more German so I don’t feel quite as lost as I do now operating public transit and buying groceries. 

In relation to an excerpt of "On Travelling Places", I find it necessary to note that there is a certain desolation to the in between places of travel that provides context for the places one has to be. I became terrified of the process of traveling, as a different kind of endurance is needed to get oneself to where one desires to be. As described, "there was poetry in this forsaken service station perched on the ridge of the motorway, far from all habitation" (30). Indeed, being "alive to the power of the liminal traveling traveling place" is interesting in that most travelers are unaware of the power of these places. The only power that I've noticed in these liminal places, or mainly just London Heathrow, is the power to enhance whatever feelings you are experiencing at the time. Mine simply happened to involve exhaustion, homesickness, and self doubt. But the liminal traveling places have power. And I am expecting I will find power in this foreign land in places I least expect. 

To me, the processes of journey and travel are not synonymous, though they do sometimes intersect. A journey is not always a physical progression. It absolutely can be, however, and a journey can oftentimes emerge during travel or be the impetus for travel. I love the quote “journeys are the midwives of thought.” I think it’s spot on because journeys facilitate thought through bring you out of your comfort zone.
           
I waited to write this post until I was traveling back to Buenos Aires. I’ve been home in Florida for the past seven weeks, feeling incredible static and as if my yearlong journey in Buenos Aires was on a temporary hiatus. My foremost feeling about going back was excitement, until today, the day of my departure, when it turned to nerves.
 
I’ve always loved the saying “fear is ungrounded excitement” and I believe that to be absolutely true. When viewing my situation objectively: I’ve already spent a semester in Buenos Aires, know the area and the professors I’ll be having, etc., I am entering a far more secure situation than last semester. However, I think all the time at home and complacency has caused me to regress as if this is my first semester in BsAs.
 
I love the process of travel, particularly on airplanes, because it allows you to truly relax. On an airplane, you can spend six hours watching mindless television and there’s truly nothing better you could have been doing. I personally fear for the day when airplanes WIFI internet because then I’ll be forced into productivity. It’s a time of suspended animation. Not to be morbid, but if something wretched were to happen in the world during a flight, you would be spared from the reality for a few extra hours.
 
The can relate heavily to Baudelaire’s feelings towards living in the same cramped city his entire life. I’ve read his writings on Paris, how stressful and corrosive it seemed to be for him. I draw similarities to how it is when I spend too much time in New York City, I find myself drained and exhausted from the constant struggle of exertion the city demands. In Buenos Aires, I’ve had the opportunity to strike a balance of stimulation and relaxation within a big city. I hope to further practice this in the upcoming semester and bring this inner calmness back to New York when I return in the fall. The two cultures are so dramatically different however. To me, the processes of journey and travel are not synonymous, though they do sometimes intersect. A journey is not always a physical progression. It absolutely can be, however, and a journey can oftentimes emerge during travel or be the impetus for travel. I love the quote “journeys are the midwives of thought.” I think it’s spot on because journeys facilitate thought through bring you out of your comfort zone.

The photo I've uncluded was taken on the Buquebus back from Uruguay last November. it proves that their's beauty not only in the destinations, but in the in-betweeness of travel as well. 
           

“On the road, we often live more simply (even when staying in a luxury hotel), with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance.”

I remember staring at my cobalt Samsonite, trying to envision packing four months into it.  I once packed a whole year into its narrow frame, but that was as unfathomable then as four months is now.  I packed this same suitcase full to bursting just travel home for winter break freshman year.  I packed and unpack and repacked for weeks, unable to fit everything within the given limit. 
It felt like being in limbo, with a suitcase half packed and the plane ticket bought, when all I really wanted to do was snuggle into the couch with my dog, my family, or my friends.  I wanted more time to ramble around my hometown, wanted to extend my period of limbo indefinitely.  I couldn’t pack up my family’s love, my childhood bedroom, my wonderful friends.  I packed my photographs, but left my beloved books because they were too heavy.  No art supplies, none of my favorite shoes.
I’ve always been a stuff person, a collector.  My bedroom is covered in things I’ve collected from flea markets and thrift stores, travels and gifts.  I love sculpture and large scale painting and took four years of classes in high school and another three semesters in college.  My artwork fills shelves and wall space, tucked into corners and behind furniture.  When I came home from India, I swear the sheer amount of stuff I own doubled.  Now that I had to pick up and move my life again, I cared about the things I had collected.  Those items were repositories of my memories, physical representations of parts of my life I had left behind me, and the people whose love I could not feel directly everyday.  Every statue and pair of earrings cradled my memories, and if I couldn’t pack those memories, I had to leave them behind.  It felt like leaving chucks of myself behind.
My best friend laughed at me as I freaked out over all the items I wanted, and all that I would have to leave behind.  His idea of packing for a foreign country entailed throwing all his clothes in a duffel, and maybe, just maybe, a toothbrush and comb.  He packed for college in trash bags.  He does not see the need for stuff as a repository for his memories.  I’m not even sure he owns a single photograph.  Sometimes, when I have to pack my entire life up to move from place to place, I envy his lack of physical attachment to the stuff of life, and when I arrive in my new home, I’m always glad to unpack quickly, with all I need and very little forgotten.
But I have to admit I miss my giant library of books.  I miss the twenty millions pillows I kept on my bed, my artwork and years of collected art supplies.  I do really miss my things, not because I am unable to live without the things but because when I am far away from home, those things give me comfort.  And so I filled the cracks in my suitcase with statues of Ganesh and bags of tea and photographs and tokens from home, even though they can’t replace the people and places I miss.  And when I miss my mother, I will make a cup of tea from her kitchen.

(Picture is mine, of my hometown)

I spent the winter break traveling all over the United States seeing my family and spending time with them before leaving for Ghana. From New York I went up to Connecticut for a few days and endured the cold to spend a few days with my aunt, uncle, and four cousins. From there I started my travels west to Shawnee, Kansas where I spend a week with my parents, brother, and friends. The ten days to follow were spend in Seattle, Washington with my husband’s family and friends and then wrapping up my month long trip my last 10 days in the country were spent in Charleston, South Carolina. From there I traveled for 25 hours stopping in Philadelphia, Brussels, Mali, and finally landing in Accra at 8:30pm- an hour and a half later than our arrival time. Traveling quickly began to lose its romanticism and finding my home has been the only real desire I feel. Right away I put my mind to adjusting quickly and making this my home so that I can feel grounded in this constantly changing environment.  

Alain De Botton captured my feelings on travel as of late in a line on page 11, “We are familiar with the notion that the reality of travel is not what we anticipated.” What I enjoy about this particular quote is that it can be seen in both an optimistic and pessimistic light. When I think about in it a literal sense I think back to the countless hours I spent on an airplane these past couple of months and I feel like I would be happy to avoid them for the rest of this year entirely! But when I think about the memories, moments, and experiences that lie ahead of me I know that no matter what I anticipate or expect from this semester abroad the reality of what will actually happen is different.

We were told before we even got to NYU-Accra to not have any expectations, to dilute the anticipation that might be pulsing through our veins disguised as excitement. Why? Because it’s a place so foreign that no amount of pictures or words can describe the emotions and feelings evoked through the reality of our every day. Even so, you can’t help but let your subconscious run free with the hidden images of what life might be like in Accra. I know I was surprised and underwhelmed by certain aspects of NYU-Accra. The most shocking has been the academics. The size of our center, (only 4 classrooms and about the size of a small house) the size of our classes, (my largest consisting of 10) and the lackadaisical attitude towards organization have all proven that patience is the key to NYU-Accra. Patience that I sometimes find myself lacking when it comes to the pace in which my professors speak, the lack of water my house has, the lack of electricity my house has, the lack of internet my house has, and the lack of air-conditioning my house has. All of these things are things that I never anticipated happening and did. But each of these unanticipated actions has already taught me a strong lesson in appreciation only three weeks into the program. I’ve already learned to lighten up, laugh when my water shuts off mid shower and think about how this is everyday life for this entire continent and only five months for me.

Perhaps the presence of expectations and anticipation is what helps put things into perspective. Your environment doesn’t adapt to you, but you adapt to your environment. Whether you are pleased or disappointed, there’s always a lesson to be learned and a lesson to grow from. And isn’t that why we travel to begin with?   

*A picture from Shai Hills Resource Reserve, a two hour long hike we took on Saturday*

My first week in Paris was incredible.  Everything was new and different.  The tastes were chocolate, coffee, baguette and orange juice.  There was poetry in everything I saw and in every step I took… I was jet lagged.  Once this marvelous haze lifted, I slowly returned to the regular me: it turns out that "I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island" (well, to Paris anyway) (19).  I started worrying about all the things I normally worry about.  I started returning to old habits that I had thought I’d lock up tight in my “do NOT bring to France” box back in California.  Apparently I need a better lock.

I was immediately anxious that I was letting myself slip off the wagon when I wasn’t able to email my best friend every day, read books for pleasure, run, eat well, make new friends, improve my French, do my job at the library, STOP BITING MY NAILS, and so on.  And then I realized two things: the first is that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to start/break many, many habits when I had just moved to a new country, and the second is that it was still ME in France, not Super (French) Woman. A third thought is that January just ended and there is ALWAYS the added pressure of the New Year and all its resolutions during the first month of the New Year – we have both the fortune and misfortune of going abroad during this extra pressured month.  It is both a distraction from our new goals and additional pressure to create an entirely different set of resolutions. Ouf!  (Interestingly, I took the above picture because, when translated, it means “To the New Year I will give my oldest dreams” which somehow relaxed me a little about this January pressure…)

Botton discusses this idea that "we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there" (23).  This comment, while witty, points out something that many people push out of their minds while planning voyages.  When you look at a picture of a place from the comfort of your own living room, it is practically impossible to remember that, while you are actually visiting this place, you will still have to work on your rationale when you get back (or even while you are still there!).  And when your rationale is looming over your head throughout your trip, it may in some ways hinder your experience (or at least dampen it at times). While it is preferable that you are able to relax and let BOTH your body and mind inhabit your new digs, this can be challenging.  However, I feel that relaxation and “in-the-momentness” are acquired skills which we are all in the process of learning simply by having made the choice to be in another country for an extended period of time.  We are learning tolive as foreigners in a new place while also soaking up as much as we can before our abroad lives are over (for now).  And that, is a goal well-worth the challenge.

I will always be a huge proponent of travel but recently I’ve been rethinking it as a concept.  I am interested in other cultures, most of my family and friends live abroad, and I study economic and culturally sustainable development- so moving around the globe has become more of a necessary norm rather than something eagerly anticipated.  The more I do meander across the map, the smaller it gets and the more familiar each place seems.  Even though I rarely stay in hotels or take part in tourist activities, which tend to be pretty normalized, I still notice that everywhere in the world is kind of the same.   Globalization has taken its toll, and my lifestyle is a clear product of that, I’m not yet sure whether I find this homogeneity to be something bad or good.  I’m sure in various ways, it is both.
 
What inspired this line of thinking was a quotation in the de Botton piece, “the destination was not really the point.  The true desire was to get away- to go.”  The more I come to truly identify with the cliché term “global citizen” the more I feel that I am losing the ability to “get away.”  It has become too commonplace to get on a plane every few weeks, take shoddy transportation, have communication troubles, and try a new cuisine. I think that maybe I’ve been “getting away” for so long that I’ve actually ended up somewhere characterized by being everywhere- the cosmopolitan interconnected world.
 
Now don’t get me wrong, I love so much about travel, I wouldn’t be living this way if I didn’t, but I feel increasingly eager to “get away” to somewhere stationary. I graduate in December and I often fantasize about living somewhere for three years or so.  I dream of having a nice loft, feeling at home, and knowing that the friends I make will be around indefinitely.  I’m excited for that chance to get away from constant movement and settling down. 
 
So why then, when I feel this stress, did I decide to study abroad a second semester?  I guess that though I feel I’ve gotten to a point where traveling is no longer “getting away,” I’m not quite done yet.  Personally and academically I think I have more to learn in Abu Dhabi than in New York, and first and foremost, I am a student and preparing for the future, is what I’m supposed to do.  It is nice though to sit here and look around my new room, hear my new friends outside, and feel “at home, “already more so than in Israel and more and more every day.