Top lessons learned include:
1- Always talk to the people surrounding you on your flight. If nothing else, meeting someone new and listening to his story is interesting, inspiring or plain bizarre. My flight home is the absolutely perfect example. I was feeling a little sad and silly for leaving London, but the people on my flight totally made up for it. There was a woman sitting at the front of the plane (just one row in front of me) with pink and orange hair and a t-shirt that said, “I can be a bad girl, too.” (!!!!) She must have taken a sleeping pill or a Quaalude or something because she was out for the entire seven hour flight. Unfortunately, she snored more loudly than all the screaming babies and airplane engines surrounding us, which would have been annoying if it hadn’t been for the fact that everyone on the flight was extremely amused by her. By the time we were five hours into the flight, people from the back of the plane were coming up to take pictures of her, and a woman with a truly infectious laugh could not stop staring and laughing at her, which made everyone else start laughing, too. (OK, it sounds meaner than I think it was meant to be; we were all confined to a small space together for many, many hours- alas, you go with the entertainment you can.) By the end of the flight, the whole plane was laughing- literally, the ENTIRE plane. Including flight attendants. When we landed, everyone got up and cheered.
May I add, this was all in Spanish, because I flew from Madrid. I am sure I missed the main points of a huge chunk of conversations I had with other people because my Spanish is abysmal. Still, a buena historia to remember and a trip that could have been very depressing salvaged!
2- If you’re homesick, just go to H&M or Whole Foods. Whether you’re in Paris, Tokyo, London, NYC or Woodbridge, Virginia, they smell the same everywhere. That kind of consistency is comforting when you start to miss the stability and familiarity of what you’ve always known.
3- Pare down your possessions and travel with a minimum of things. Beware checked bag fees, especially if your baggage exceeds the weight limit (usually 50 pounds, or appx. 30 kg), which mine did when returning home by about 35 kilograms. Talk about expensive travel. My goal while I’m in the USA is to give 10 pounds of things away and put another 20 in storage so I can travel light and not be so bogged down with belongings I don’t need or really use. Well, that and to make friends with Lena Dunham. I think the latter is a more attainable goal, because I have a LOT of stuff.
4- Just do it. Nike is really on to something. I’ve been consistently proven wrong about the doubts, fears and anxieties I’ve had about making my travel plans a reality. (This is most likely because my plans are rarely fully thought out before I start to put them in action- like buying a one way ticket back to the USA.) But if you start to feel like you have to do something, do it- listen to your gut, follow your intuition. It will never lead you astray, and you’ll end up where you need to be, even if it feels awkward, uncomfortable or restraining for a bit. Eventually, you’ll understand why you needed to change things up- your consciousness is rarely functioning at the same speed as your intuition, so it might take a while for it to catch up and reveal why you did what you did. Talk about an “A ha!” moment. Still waiting for a few of these.
5- Don’t let your friendships fall by the wayside. Miles of distance and hours of time difference are no excuse- stay in touch with the people that matter to you. Even if it’s a random Facebook message or text every month, commit to keeping the people that inspire you, make you happy or simply pique your interest close. If all else fails, I’ve found that this is a very helpful invention to keep my friendships “close”: Kissing Robots
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| Memories of good friends and good times…where to next? |