Choose Your Own Adventure ™
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005“Home is a place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”
-The Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost
One week back in Miami, back to my friends and family, back to my job, and back to my old life. It was remarkably easy to sink into my old habits again. Of course, I can’t stop thinking about the life I was leading just 2 weeks ago. When I was traveling, one week meant different cities, different beds, different companions, even different countries. This one week in Miami has been the shortest in months. I’ve slept in my own bed for 6 nights now (one night on Anibal and Melissa’s sofa after my birthday party!) - which is a first in a long while. I woke up the other night, not knowing where I was. That happened a lot while I was gone, but it was especially peculiar to realize I was in my own room.
Time really is relative, isn’t it? 7 days with Gert and by the end of it, we were like a married couple, hanging our panties out to dry together and ordering for each other in restaurants. After literally 2 minutes talking to Selina for the first time, we had decided to stay in Phnom Penh together as roommates before traveling on to Siem Reap - we didn’t even know each other’s names! A week spent in a different place every night seems like an eternity - when I think about walking into my uncle’s house for the first time, way back in September, it seems like years ago.
Several people have asked me what I’ve learned from my trip, or how it has changed me. That’s hard to answer. I met some people who looked at their own travels as a weird type of voyeurism, a way to see how other people live but with not much influence on their own lives. I’ve heard a lot of people say that those experiences, especially the unpretty ones, make them appreciate their own lives more. And I understand that, but how can it also not make you think about what you need versus what you want?
But what I can’t stop thinking about are all the decisions I had to make, and how my experiences might have differed with other choices. It reminds me of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, did anyone else read those? You get to the end of the page and are given 2 choices, and you flip to the page number of your choice and continue on from there. I used to love those books because they essentially gave you dozens of endings. Being on the road without much of a gameplan is like that. Is this person crazy/annoying/fun? Do I feel safe here? Is eating that going to make me sick? I know it sounds cliche, but what I learned more than anything else is to trust my instinct and not be afraid to take chances. I did a lot of things that were hard for me, things I had to psyche myself up for, and they always, always paid off. I’m hoping that stays with me forever.
So that’s that. I’ve spent the last week, in an effort to ward off jet-lag and/or bird flu, uploading and organizing my photos. If 500 pictures seems excessive, please understand that I’ve only posted about half of them! They’re divided by country…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shescrafty/sets/
And if you don’t have a fast connection, or really, much of an interest, and you want to look at them by subject matter, go to my “tags” page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shescrafty/tags/
I’ve tagged each photo according to where it was taken, what’s in it, etc. So, for example, if your name is Sue Moroz and you have an unhealthy fixation about my mother, you could click on the “mom” tag. The bigger the font, the more photos there are tagged with that word. I’ve also tagged some as “favorites” - if you don’t want to see all of them, you might just want to check out my faves.
