When we first began this journey to Spain, way back in October, everyone on the program had to take a 5 week class with our Program Director Keith Woodall. On the first day he gave us a list of "rules" (more like guidelines) that he believed would help us get the most out of our trip abroad. The first rule is the importance of stories. Stories connect people and they are things you carry around with you everywhere you go. They make you who you are. But this week, I am definitely reflecting on his second guideline: the people and the importance of talking to people. In this first month of travel alone, I have met so many amazing people.
One of the first people that stands out to me that I met was Brendan. Brendan was our tour guide for our rail tour that we took around Ireland. He was an older man who has worked in the tourism industry for a long time. Near the end of our tour, when we were taking the train ride back to our hostel in Dublin, he came up to us with a bottle of Irish whisky and some plastic cups and wanted to toast to our successful journey. As an American, this was a bit of a shock. You don't normally have tour guides come up to you on a moving train and offer you some whisky. But we drank with him and he told us a little bit about his life. He has served on many tourism councils and even met former US President Ronald Reagan. He told us that when he met Reagan, the security and background check process was so extensive that two people on the council ended up being denied access just because something on their paperwork didn't look right (both of those people were American, classic). It's so cool to meet and talk to someone who has lived such a long full life of travel. He told us the hardest thing he has experienced in his life of travel is going to countries where the income gaps are huge. He would be staying in a very nice five star hotel for a tourism conference and then walk down the street for dinner and see tons of people sleeping in the street. It's just not right, he told us.
The next person that has made an impact on me in this first month is one of my professors at the university named Luisa. She is the literature professor that every student hopes they get. She does not just tell you about Don Quijote, she acts it out, she feels it, and she performs it in her lectures. She makes our class so fun and so animated. She is also not afraid to go off topic if it means talking about something important, a quality I love in professors. She spent an entire half of class discussing with us the difficulties of learning English. She has been taking classes for years and years and she told us she still can't speak it very well and still does not feel that she is understood because when you only learn in class and don't practice outside of class you lose so much. For that reason, her son is taking English classes in school and supplementary classes outside of school (I find this is pretty common, my host brothers do the same). It is his dream to go to the United States and see New York city. Luisa told us that she always tells him, if you want to go to the US, you need to know English well. With a few of the recent changes made by our current government, she worries that her son would not be welcome in the US and he thinks he may not be able to go. For me, it is so hard to watch someone so amazing feel that they and their family would not be welcome in my own country. That's a feeling I won't forget.
The last person I will talk about that kind of inspired this post is Julianna. I met Julianna this past weekend that I spent in Lisbon, Portugal. I met her while moving our things into our hostel. After we got to talking with her about who are what we were doing in Lisbon this weekend, she told us a little bit about herself. She's from Rio in Brazil originally. She told us that she was living with a boyfriend at the time in a decent neighborhood, but that every decent neighborhood is still surrounded by slums. She said when you get robbed in Brazil, they don't just secretly pick pocket you, they will hold a gun up to you and there is a good chance they will kill you. (This sentiment was confirmed by a waitress of ours at a restaurant in Lisbon who told us when her mother's best friend was on her honeymoon in Brazil, she was killed because thieves tried to take her camera and she gave it to them but asked if she could just keep the memory card). Julianna said one night she and her boyfriend were eating dinner when they heard people breaking into their house. Their only option was to hide under the table and hope that the only thing the thieves took was their property. She told us while sitting under that table, that was the moment she realized this is no way to live a life. She thought if she can't even have a quiet meal in her home safely then there is truly no point in being there. After things fell through with the boyfriend, she packed up and left for fashion school in France which is where she is now. Her fearlessness and willingness to confront her reality head on, is something I will never forget. I will also never forget how incredibly lucky I am to have born in a country where I can walk around in the open without fear of being innocently shot or attacked.
I am so lucky to be meeting so many amazing people along my journey through Spain and other parts of Europe. These are just a few of the many people who have inspired me along this trip. They make living thousands of miles away from loved ones just a little bit easier.
This is me and my art history professor when we met up at Carnaval!