Now that I am home I should probably wrap things up with a quick synopsis of my trip, my favorite places, what I have learned, how it changed me. Which reminds me; I dislike the question people keep asking me “What was your favorite place”? How can I answer that? How will you answer the question of your favorite movie? Your favorite book? Your favorite food? There’s genres, top tens, preferred actors and categories. Its not a good follow up question to where have you been.
Getting back to my trip summary it’s hard to convey the many ideas and thoughts that come to mind when trying to summarize. I have seen ninety year olds working hard labor, and little kids begging for food. All of this is nothing new to me, and have seen all this before. Many people don’t get the chance to travel, and many don’t want to stray too far from home. The fastest way to get old is to settle into a routine, do whatever it takes to avoid the monotony of daily schedules, worries, and fears of the future. Do something new every day, try to do something that scares you, appreciate the things you have, and who you are. There are many out there that have less, and struggle through life without having the luxury to stop and think, summarize, or even slow down enough to appreciate what they have.
I would like to add a funny story that happened to me in New Zealand. Near the glacier hot springs, we stayed at a hotel that was popular with many other tour groups. Now I need to preface this with the notice that this doesn’t happen to me often. Although I consider myself to be friendly and pleasant , I don’t swagger around with the looks of Ryan Gosling, or the charm of the pied piper. I must exude some sort of an appeal and the following proves it to some degree. I met this girl doing laundry. A rather sweet girl from Detroit, and we exchanged not more than three minutes of conversation. I exclaimed how cliche it was meeting in a laundry room and bantered for a minute. My group was leaving so I told her to meet us later for drinks and pointed to my room.
She never came for drinks and I totally forgot about her, until I came home late and found the following note on my door.
Now I must point out that she forgot to write her room number, and although not necessarily the reason, nothing happened. Just to play devils advocate, it could have been her unsuccessfully playing some sort of twisted joke on me, thinking I will be tortured by the missing room number, and cursing my luck, not knowing me and my inability to care . On the other hand it could have been something as simple as her writing the note drunk and completely forgetting that important detail, or her actually having told me the room number and me just having forgotten or not listened.
The follow up to the story is even funnier, involving a Canadian teacher, with the English skills of a dyslexic monkey. Now I don’t have anything against Canadians per se, but I do get annoyed at the lengths they will go, to make sure everyone they meet knows they are not American, their inability to laugh at themselves, and their condescending attitude and constant perpetuation of the “ignorant American” stereotype. They slap Canadian flags all over their luggage, and attack you if you so much as make fun of their National Anthem, which incidentally has less of a tune than the mating call of a Hippo with severe constipation. After hearing about the original note, she left her own note below. Now I had a feeling it was her, since it fell to the floor and kept avoiding it until she pointed it out asking me what it was.
The comedic part is her spelling of the word “embrace” spelling it “embrass”. She was drunk that night when I confronted her, and she denied any involvement. I then asked her how to spell embrace, and she gave me the same spelling as the note. Obviously this proves her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt , but she insisted it was the correct spelling and had to look it up on Google to be swayed otherwise. The fact that she’s a Canadian teacher gives me so much more satisfaction.
The note, the laundry puns, the self esteem boost are all great things, but the fact that it put some Canadian in her place after berating Americans the entire trip; Priceless!
For the record, nobody hates Americans anymore. The wars are over, the world has moved on, and I was shown nothing but love wherever I went (except in North Vietnam, where the wounds are still fresh, and a few shopkeepers refused to sell to Westerners, which is a big deal, considering the poverty that they live in).