Travel, Behind the Scenes

As glamorous and thrilling as it appears in social media posts, at times in real life, worldwide travel can look a little different. It's not all laughing and playing and feeling #blessed as the pictures would lead you to believe. Sometimes it's boring. Sometimes it's exhausting, scary, or emotional. Even taking a small step outside your comfort zone can leave you feeling a bit raw.

Sometimes "travel", a word we've come to associate with adventure and luxury, means swallowing your pride and sleeping on the floor of the airport for ten hours! Sometimes it means wearing the same pair of socks until you can smell them from outside your shoes! Sometimes it means getting homesick, even though you feel silly since you're only gone for a month and the home you're missing didn't even exist until a few years ago! But it's a feeling and you're having it. It can even mean eating grilled cheese for the 25th day in a row because your host mom is respecting your vegetarianism and you are thankful, but would like a little variety! 

Sometimes it means carrying all your stuff on your back... and your front!

In reality, there are train cancellations, miscommunication, lost suitcases, and layovers. For all the good it brings, travel can also be uncomfortable, confusing, and exasperating. And then, of course, we remember the new places, friendships, and cultures it leads us to, and somehow it all works itself out. Travel can mean so many different things to us, but in my brief 28 years of experience, it has always-- and I mean the every-single-time type of always-- been worth it.