A bit of explanation for my travel infatuation

I’m obsessing over this trip to Chile. Sometimes it seems like it’s the only thing in my head. If you ask me to point out the happiest thing in my life, the thing that keeps my head up and, sometimes, what gets me out of bed in the morning, I’d scream that it was the knowledge that in about 80 days, I will be leaving for South America.

I’ve always loved to travel. In the past year or so, I’ve come to realize I feel more at home when I’m living out of a suitcase, spending entire days in airports, than I do in Reno or Winnemucca. On my first solo trip out of the country, a five-day jaunt to Puebla, Mexico via D.F. to visit my then-girlfriend studying abroad, I came to find that everything I love about travel is brought into much sharper focus when I am abroad.

Allow me to better explain.

I think (and this is just an educated guess because, as anyone around me knows, I really don’t have anything about myself figured out completely) that the reason I love to travel is the thrill of exploration, and not only physical exploration, either (though I enjoy that, too). In addition to finding new restaurants, buildings, neighborhoods and bars, I love getting a taste of the people and their culture in each place.

While in Puebla, D (my new blog codename for my ex-girlfriend, out of respect for her likely wish I not write about her on the Internet. Those who really care probably know who she is anyway, though) left me alone for a morning while she was interning at a hospital. During those few hours alone in a city I’d just arrived in, without knowing more than the most rudimentary of phrases in the local language, I managed to find and purchase breakfast, buy the local newspaper (which I plowed through enough of to get what I still believe were the most important parts) and strike up brief conversations with a handful of people.

The conversations ranged in complexity from a maid asking how I was doing that morning (she kindly corrected my response of “Bien… err… ¿bueno?” to a confident “Bien, ¿y tú?”) to a gentleman who saw me reading the paper and asked what I thought of the proposed Volkswagen factory expansion (through the conversation, which was actually rather long and intelligent for my beginning-level Spanish, I learned that he thought I was a German at first glance) to college students interviewing me on camera in both English and Spanish about what I thought of their city (there was three girls, one a French major, one an English major and the third a German major – they had all the languages they would need covered, I guess).

Though the entire experience lasted no more than a few hours, it is among the things I remember most vividly about my trip to Puebla. Since then, I’ve tried to do the same thing in every city I visit. A week later in Austin, Texas, I managed to strike up conversations with a number of journalists attending a conference with me and even had a (then illegal) drink with a local girl I later learned was my age and a mother of a two-year-old child and wanted nothing more than to leave Texas. While in Washington, I managed short conversations with the District’s locals in coffee shops and bars in Adams Morgan nearly every weekend and by the end of the summer I was giving directions and Metro advice to tourists from the Bible Belt.

I’ve always thought of myself as being a little shy, but something about being taken away from my home (I’d say “out of my comfort zone,” but I already said earlier I am more comfortable traveling) makes me the outgoing person I always want to be. It’s the feeling I get when I’m reporting, but better because it’s not so combative and agenda-driven. Something beautiful inside me bubbles to the surface when I am learning about a new place that I just can’t replicate at home.

I know Santiago is going to challenge my shyness again. Though my Spanish has improved since last fall when I went to Mexico, it is still only conversational. But that’s good. I want to have to work at this, to force myself to learn this language so I can get to know Chileans. I want to kill the image I have of myself as the shy kid in the corner, and what better way to do that once and for all than to live in a county – hell, a continent – I not only have never been to, but don’t even fully know the language of? I’m ready for this.

OK, so that was sort of a long (and, against what I said in the last post, a little self-centered and narcissistic) post. If you read the whole thing, thanks, and feel free to leave me some feedback. Oh, and Mom: It’s not that I don’t want family to read this; it’s just that I’d like some friends and others to see it as well.