study abroad Archives | In Lieu of Postcards

On Losing Yourself: Preparing for a Trip Abroad

After a long hiatus, I’m excited to resume my writing about travel! As much as I enjoy writing about travel all times of the year, I’ve gotten out of practice due to work, other creative projects and various life events (including having to unexpectedly move), not to mention the fact that I haven’t done much Traveling with a capital “T.” But my husband is teaching a study abroad course in Italy this summer and attending a conference in Dublin beforehand, with me along for the ride. (He noted that he did not even tell me he applied to such a conference until he received his acceptance because, apparently, I tend to get unduly excited about such prospects.) So I currently find myself, for the first time since my spring semester abroad 15 years ago (yes, I am now OLD), preparing to spend a substantial amount of time (two months) abroad. It’s pretty cool, and I feel incredibly lucky that we (barely) have the money and the flexibility to pull it off. But I do have one small worry: that my anticipation, high expectations and tendency to over-plan juuuuust might be my downfall.

Born to Itinerary

The thing is, I am a great planner. I love planning a trip, something I didn’t realize until I planned my first, our honeymoon to Dublin (where we met) in 2016. I was drunk on the freedom of deciding where we would go and what we would do, thrilled by the ability to put together pieces on how we could get to each place and move smoothly from one thing to the next. The truth is, I was probably born to be a travel agent (but not really, because the idea of dealing regularly with airlines makes my palms sweat). But this tendency doesn’t necessary help one enjoy travel; in fact, it can have the opposite effect. While I strive to take a slower pace and avoid the marathon sightseeing of the stereotypical tourist, I have to admit that the kind of planning I do – writing down in a notebook everything I’d like to do, reading restaurant and coffeeshop reviews and the best hive-mind recommendations – is not exactly a recipe for the more romantic and immersive aspects of travel I claim to love.

The Beauty of Being a Know-Nothing

When I think about the experiences that solidified my love of travel, after all, they were not those that I had written beforehand in a mini-notebook or booked through Trip Advisor. During my semester abroad in Dublin, for example, I pretty much knew nothing about anything, bouncing around to whatever bars and clubs that I heard about from my peers (quite a few of them trendy hell-holes), wandering the streets not knowing where or what the historical, cultural or other tourist attraction were, but rather learning as I came across them. (My brother loves to tell the story about visiting me a few weeks into my study abroad experience and having to point out the Spire of Dublin to me, which I had never noticed despite standing right next to it.)

When I returned to Dublin (and I will again this summer), it was with a mind of correcting that behavior a bit, learning more history and culture and trying to go to “good,” “authentic” and “historical” places. Did I see interesting things and eat good food? Yes, of course. But was it more impactful and enriching than the first experience? Absolutely not. Sometimes to really immerse in a culture, you have to try losing yourself, ignoring that pesky controlling voice within. Sometimes, I suppose, you’ve just got to go to some trendy hell-holes to see the light.

Yet with our two-month European adventure – to Ireland, England, The Netherlands and Italy – just a few days away, I’ve already written way too much in my little notebook (and the impulse remains to write more). The travel agent in my head wonders if it isn’t a good idea to look up a few more London restaurant recommendations, to pour over my Dublin map and find out what route I might take on a meander (yes, I’d still prefer to call it that) through the city. You really should review a map of Venice, it says, despite the fact that I’m not even going there until July, and I’ll have my laptop and phone with me the entire trip.

Thus, I’m attempting to push that little travel agent within aside. Instead of building my anticipation and sheer delight at the thought of the summer ahead (and that delight is a big reason travel planning is such an addiction), I’ve decided to turn my attention to why I really enjoy travel. I’ve written in the past about things I like to do when traveling, the places I love, and why travel is important, but in my cloud of precision-planning, I don’t want to lose my own reasons for travel, its mental and emotional impact.

Focusing on the Why

So, why is it that I like to travel? This may seem like a strange question, as generally in our society long-distance travel, even for work, is something about which we’re expected to be excited. When I happen to share the news that I’m embarking upon a two-month trip to Europe, the standard responses include “That’s so exciting!” “You must be so excited!” “I’m jealous!” etc., etc. I’m sure that, in part, this has to do with my tone and countenance; if I sighed heavily and explained that I *had* to travel all summer because my husband was dragging me all sorts of places, perhaps they’d react differently. (Though they’d probably think I was at best odd and at worst a potentially miserable person.) But what is it about going somewhere with a different culture (even one that’s only slightly different in the grand scheme of things) that feels so thrilling?

Lost and Found

There are many schools of thought on travel, and it’s honestly a subject that’s been written to death by backpacker types on every blog and website imaginable (insert photo here of girl in anorak standing on edge of mountain). Two perspectives seem to come up again and again: 1) that travel helps you find yourself and 2) that it helps you lose yourself. I’ve personally vacillated between these. I think of the times, when I was a kind simple traveling to my grandparents’ house in eastern Pennsylvania from Illinois, how I felt blissful at the opportunity to be away from home, and how it stoked my imagination with dreams of being somebody different. I think of the delight I feel still in being anonymous on a foreign city street, in a market, on a bus or train, willing myself to fall into a new city’s complex choreography. These sensations fit pretty snugly in category two.

But I also think of the more enriching moments of travel, the negotiations and interactions, the attempts to explain myself and to find out about others. I think of the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve learned, and how I must wedge them into my formed conception of the world, how I’ve turned them over in my mind and processed them through my experiences. I think of the experience of a semester abroad, and how what at first felt disappointing and disorienting became a time of personal evolution, of coming of age and developing a sense of myself.

It’s this last thing that really gets to the heart of it. The fact is, travel can be about both losing yourself and finding yourself. If I really dig deep to suss out the appeal of travel, to me, is the way it combines a feeling of hyperawareness of oneself with a sort of forced reset. Thrust yourself into a foreign country, with all its attendant communication issues and challenges, and you’re forced to confront the person you truly are: how you relate to others, how you respond to challenges, what aspects of culture you are drawn to, which ones you misunderstand or fear. You are removed from the familiar surroundings that sometimes obscure these aspects of your identity, and thus they come into sharp relief.

But you lose yourself in some ways, too. Trying to forge relationships with those from other cultures can be challenging; because you lack a cultural shorthand and perhaps also have a language barrier, it can be difficult to show them who you really are. It can be frustrating to compare these encounters to those with friends at home, and wish the people you met abroad could know you in that same way. But isn’t it thrilling to be someone ever-so-slightly different, to figure out how to present yourself in a new context? To navigate new situations like this can make us feel foolish and uninteresting (in Italian my conversation is basically limited to asking a person how they are, and then naming different types of food, clothing and animals) but it also shakes you out of complacency, and forces you to answer for your beliefs and attitude in ways you never have before.

Coping Mechanisms for Losing Yourself

When I’ve led study abroad classes in the past, I’ve at times had to check my frustration when students become absorbed in Instagram during sightseeing expeditions, meals or meetings, or when they ignore the tour guide’s insights in favor of discussions about the minutiae of life back home. Think about where you are! I want to remind them. You may not be here again! And yet, I also realize that these behaviors are not a sign of apathy or disinterest per se: they are in fact a natural response to the unmooring sensation of travel. The students are out of their cultural context – many for the first time – and it can feel alien and dangerous; not only in the sense of physical, walking-down-an-unfamiliar-street-at-night danger, but in the sense of losing the context within which we feel defined and unique. Some of us turn to social media and to banal discussions of fraternity parties to continue to grasp a firm identity, to make sure we still understand ourselves.

And some of us, we plan.

It’s a natural reaction and, whether or not you give in, travel will change you.

I know that this summer will not be as life-changing as a first trip abroad, but I also know that if I let go a little, these two months will have something to teach me. Here’s hoping I can stay committed to write a bit about the amazing places I will visit. Stay tuned!

On Anthony Bourdain and Transformative Travel

Bourdain taught us that travel is more than a vacation, and people around the world are more alike than we think.

Like most people who love travel, I was hit hard by Anthony Bourdain’s death earlier this month. When we heard, my husband and I had just wrapped up year two of the short study abroad program we lead in southern Italy (for the University of Oklahoma), and were visiting friends in Exeter in Devon, England for a few days before heading back to the states. We spent the day and night following his death in a way Bourdain would appreciate: exploring a place we’d never been — the rocky English coastal town of Lyme Regis — and then settling down for an epic dinner of local crab salad, sausages, cheeses, beer, and wine over conversation with good friends.

In that moment more than ever, I felt that these are the kinds of experiences that make life worth living. Anthony Bourdain believed that, too — or at least he expressed as much in his writing. Why a man with so much passion for life decided to end his, we can’t know. We can only hope that at this time of crisis in our country, his straightforward, inspiring, important body of work can continue its reach and impact.

Anthony Bourdain’s Legacy

As with most things, I wasn’t able to truly appreciate Anthony Bourdain until he was gone. I had followed two of his travel shows — No Reservations and Parts Unknown — and read some of his work, even assigning one of his essays, “The Hungry American,” as part of last year’s study abroad curriculum (this year I subbed it out to make room for more women writers). I knew, as clearly as one knows that Neapolitan-style pizza is superior to Domino’s, that his travel shows were by far the best in the genre. But I hadn’t really reckoned with the complexity of his work — what it was all about, and what it was doing — until he passed. I came home from our three-week European trip jet-lagged, sick, and determined to return to Bourdain’s oeuvre, for my money one of the more impressive in the history of travel writing.

When I returned to No Reservations and Parts Unknown, it hit me immediately just how much of my perspective had already been subtly shaped by years of watching these shows. When I became familiar with Bourdain in my early twenties, I was already in love with travel due to my study abroad experience living in Ireland and traveling in Western Europe. But funny as it sounds, Bourdain’s work actually helped me to better understand my own experience of living and traveling abroad. And he also introduced me slowly to new places I had never thought of traveling, approaching them in ways both accessible and unexpected.

The Saturday market in Catania, Sicily. — The Saturday market in Catania, Sicily: a Bourdain-esque cultural experience, 2018.

Though Bourdain has stated that before beginning No Reservations he’d “been basically nowhere,” his perspective is informed by his experiences as the grandson of French immigrants and as a longtime chef. Chefs, I would have to imagine, confront on a daily basis the influence of the global on our day-to-day life. Whether brought here by immigrants, colonialism, or other means, American food as we know it would not exist without the influence of a great many cultures. So it was natural that Bourdain evolved into a crusader for global travel and cross-cultural exchange, and in his down-to-earth, freewheeling way, took viewers around the world like no one else on television has done. Geared toward all curious parties (recognizing that the majority of viewers would never make it to such far-flung places), Bourdain’s shows eschew the guidebook format of hosts like Rick Steves and Samantha Brown. He brings viewers as close as possible to the experience of transformative travel in the interest of creating a more open-minded and better world.

The Bourdain Philosophy of Travel

Overall, watching Bourdain uncovered for me something I had already learned, but perhaps refused to acknowledge: that to travel and really learn something — truly connect — is difficult. Due mainly to our work-infatuated culture, we in this country often see travel as synonymous with vacation. Escape is a term that comes up often: escape from our day-to-day lives, our responsibilities, our mundane selves. But transformative travel, of the kind Bourdain favored, is quite the opposite.

The busy streets of Naples. — The busy streets of Naples, 2018.

Claude Levi-Strauss’s 1955 travel memoir Tristes Tropiques features one of my favorite travel-related quotes:“Perhaps, then, this was what traveling was, an exploration of the deserts of my mind rather than those surrounding me.”

Of course people — relationships, meetings, connections — are central to his work, but I think Bourdain would agree that travel is at its heart about the traveler. That the primary reward of travel is its impact on one’s consciousness and perspective, the way it nudges one’s mind open painstakingly, almost imperceptibly. For travel of the non-“escape” variety, as Bourdain knew, means not shirking but taking on additional responsibility — the responsibility of the respectful, curious traveler who attempts real connection with another culture and the people in it. This traveler must navigate the attendant confusion, awkwardness, discomfort, and self-consciousness this implies. It’s not easy, and attempts may even feel “unsuccessful.” It may take days, weeks, months, years to sink in — until one morning, you wake up to find you’ve grown to understand the world just a little bit more.

With our study abroad group in Napoli, learning about the mafia, 2017.

Study Abroad à la Bourdain

Our study abroad course, taught through the College of International Studies at OU, is technically a hybrid of Art History and Travel Writing. My husband the art history professor tries to teach our students (as much as one can in the course of a mere 11 days) how to look at things, how to notice and describe and make meaning from the act of seeing. And I introduce them to something called “travel writing” (of which most have never heard) through readings and discussions about what it means to travel, to be a traveler, and how to tell stories about travel and evoke a sense of place.

But the real point of the course is much larger. What we hope students really take away is not the ability to describe the mosaics at Pompeii or write an entertaining essay about getting lost in Naples. Ours is (or should be) the goal of every study abroad course: for them to learn that travel can be more than just taking a photo with the Colosseum, or sitting on a beach at a resort (though there’s nothing inherently wrong with those things). That the real reward is the process of learning about, negotiating, and connecting with another culture. We want them to see that difference isn’t scary. We want them to learn that there are people all over the world, speaking different languages and practicing different customs, with whom they have an awful lot in common. And in the end, we want them to see that traveling with an open, curious mind is one way to grow as a human being in this world. It’s a tall order for less than two weeks. The best we can hope for is to plant a seed.

Learning about food at a local farm, Sorrento, Italy. — Farm in Sorrento, Italy, where our group learned about local food, 2018.

This same mission statement is behind pretty much all of Anthony Bourdain’s travel-related work. In an America that grows increasingly paranoid and isolationist by the day, he made it his mission to demonstrate that our differences on the surface belie our similarities underneath. Recently, I revisited his Travel Channel series No Reservations, which I remembered as perhaps less intentional than Parts Unknown. I was surprised to find that from episode one, the Bourdain philosophy made famous by the best episodes of Parts Unknown (“Hanoi,” “Iran,” “Cuba,” “Jerusalem”) was already crystal-clear: that much of the ethnocentrism and xenophobia present in our culture is a result of ignorance, and that travel is its essential antidote.

I had forgotten that No Reservations began just a few years after 9/11, when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in full swing and the United States had adopted a with-us-or-against-us position regarding its allies. The first episode takes place in Paris, with Bourdain critiquing the ridiculous anti-French sentiment and “freedom fries” rhetoric of that era. In this episode and others, Bourdain performs a balancing act, highlighting cultural differences and idiosyncrasies while always keeping up his mantra: we’re all pretty much the same. This is a delicate message for a cable show, but he makes it look easy.

Bourdain and Obama in a clip from Parts Unknown, "Hanoi." — Bourdain and Obama in a clip from Parts Unknown, “Hanoi.” (Source: Pete Souza / Barack Obama Twitter.)

Take Bourdain’s conversation with then-President Obama on the most famous episode of Parts Unknown, as the two share a dinner of bún chả in Hanoi, Vietnam: “We’re at a point where we seem to be turning inwards,” Bourdain remarks. “I mean, we’re actually talking about building a wall around our country. And yet you have been reaching out to people who don’t necessarily agree with us — Gaza, Iran, Cuba — I mean, I just wish that more Americans had passports. The sense in which you can see how other people live seems useful at worst and incredibly pleasurable and interesting at best.”

Obama, nodding his head, agrees. “It confirms the basic truth,” he says, “that people everywhere are pretty much the same.”

Students doing Judo with teenagers in at Star Judo Gym, which helps children in Scampia through sport — Our students doing Judo with teenagers in at Star Judo Gym, which helps children in Scampia through sport, 2018.

This is the kind of balance those of us who teach study abroad courses must strive for: to highlight the specific and unique aspects of a culture without exoticizing or othering, always attempting to maintain that tacit acknowledgement that really, we’re all the same. For our program, we’re lucky enough to work with an Italian guide (the marvelous Katia) who integrates Bourdain-like experiences into our curriculum: meetings with immigrant-advocacy and anti-mafia nonprofits, as well as locals whose lives have been touched by the mafia, a visit to a local organic farm, and even a visit to a judo gym for underprivileged children and teens. Of course, Italian culture is not such a difficult one for new travelers to embrace, and it’s unencumbered by the negative associations Americans have with places like Iran or Cuba. But it all comes down to the same principle: introduce travelers to actual people from that culture, and those travelers will likely come away with a great deal more empathy and less fear.

Global Education in Trump’s America

And so though I’m somewhat new at this whole study abroad thing (and this whole teaching thing, for that matter, as I’ve only been doing it for a few years), more and more I’ve realized how crucial learning about other cultures — even if one can’t travel — is to becoming an educated citizen. Every day in Trump’s America, we see the results of the opposite. Trump promotes ignorance and fear of those different from us and a belief, despite this ignorance, that we are superior. It’s a sickening, cynical way to look at the world, one that directly results in mistreatment of immigrants, people of color, the lgbtq community — and the list goes on.

Meeting with staff at Eleven, a restaurant that hires and trains immigrants from Northern Africa. — Meeting with staff at Eleven in Catania, Sicily, a restaurant that hires and trains immigrants from Northern Africa, 2017.

It’s true that not everyone can afford to travel the globe, and many lack the financial means to travel even to another state. But through work like Anthony Bourdain’s, they can approximate the experience. And that’s worth a lot. Because in addition to teaching us open-mindedness and empathy, travel — or the approximation of it — humbles us. This is true for young and old, experienced or first-time traveler. The world is staggering and vast, we quickly learn. But this revelation need not be a negative one. Personally, when I think about how much of the world in all of its beautiful complexity I have yet to learn about, I feel awestruck, energized, even comforted. People are mostly the same, yes. But that fact makes their differences all the more interesting.

One of my favorite Bourdain quotes to this effect comes from an early episode of No Reservations set in Peru. Plainly inspired by his experience, Bourdain demonstrates the enthusiasm, passion, and embrace of life that made his death so difficult to comprehend. “It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be,” he says. “The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go and how much more there is to learn.” He pauses. “Perhaps that’s enlightenment enough — to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

(Top image: Bourdain eating with friends in Iran on Parts Unknown. Source: CNN)

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A Love of Travel…and Where It Comes From

There is something about travel that quenches some essential human thirst — to understand the lives of others, to see the earth that we live in and exploit, to experience the truly novel, to feel uncomfortable and awed and like the most rock-solid version of oneself.

A Childhood of Road Trips

I’ve had a love of travel for as long as I can remember. I think one reason for this is that I’ve always felt I’ve had multiple homes. My father is a professor, and with the academic life comes uprootedness: my parents, both from eastern Pennsylvania, moved to a small town in Illinois before I was born and, despite initial misgivings, remain there to this day. For me as a child, this meant lots of road trips “back east.” Every summer (and some winter holidays), we would load up in the car for the one-and-half-day’s drive to Mountain Top, PA, the tiny town near Scranton where my maternal grandparents lived, tucked away up a steep road in the Appalachian mountains. I loved these trips, and the regular contact with relatives far away made me feel not-quite-midwestern, but not-quite-northeastern, either. Though my home was in Illinois, I never remember feeling completely owned by it, always aware of the fact that it is possible have roots all over.

These early road trips meant a lot to me. I loved the chance to go to a different place — to breathe different air, see new landscapes, and be someone just a little bit different. But I also loved the journey itself. My family became pros at the road trip: we would compile bags full of travel games, books, and magazines, load up a cooler with a picnic lunch (bologna and cheese with a mustard happy face, please), and crank up the oldies radio. We’d play wiffle ball at rest stops and splash in the hotel pool — no matter how rinky-dink. Though my brother and I would have our occasional backseat squabbles, and certainly, things went wrong, I can’t remember much of that now. My memories focus on the bliss of being on the road.

One of the things I loved best about traveling was what one might call roadside Americana: truck stops and rest areas; motels, hotels, and lodges; the people, signs, and oddities that flew by the window. When I was only six years old, we took the quintessential Americana road trip, a journey across the western U.S., taking in the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Corn Palace, Yellowstone National Park, and a multitude of other things I can’t specifically remember, but which left an impression on me. I recall a big horn sheep perched on the edge of a mountain, aisles of glorious kitsch at Wall Drug, the unfamiliar and thrilling sights, sounds, and smells.

The degree of adventure, however, was beside the point: We went a number of exciting places, like Walt Disney World and New York City, but I never lost my love for that familiar summer road trip, through the flat plains of Indiana to the Cross Country Inn in Toledo, Ohio to the quirky Appalachia of my parents’ hometowns. The trappings of the road were everywhere, and they were enough to satisfy me.

The Magic of Study Abroad

Photo from my semester in Ireland, 2004, which contributed to my love of travel. — One of the few non-blurry photos from my semester in Ireland, 2004. This was taken on Inis Mór, in the Aran Islands.

If those summer road trips were the first way travel changed my life, then the second was the semester I spent in Dublin, Ireland as a junior in college. I had been to Ireland once previously to visit my brother on his study abroad, and briefly to France on a class trip, but that had been the extent of my international travel. My semester in Dublin was a revelation. Difficult at first (and I should note that I wrote a whole essay about this experience for proFmagazine.com), the semester turned into the best of my life. I grew up that semester, came into my own, fell in love with my now-husband, and fell in love with both Ireland and Europe. After a period of poverty and graduate school (don’t they always go hand-in-hand), I was able to go back, and have since been lucky enough to travel more in Europe — particularly Italy.

I realize that my stories are not unique. There is something about travel, whether it’s a simple day trip or an international adventure, that quenches some essential human thirst — to understand the lives of others, to see the earth that we live in and exploit, to experience the truly novel, to feel uncomfortable and awed and like the most rock-solid version of oneself.

Why Write a Blog?

As a writer, I’d never before thought about writing a “travel blog” — one reason for this is that I never considered myself that much of a traveler. Sure, I traveled more than most people, but constricted as I was by a full-time job, I couldn’t be constantly on-the-go, nor could I spent long periods of time away from home. But in 2016, I realized it was time for a change, and transitioned from my full-time university job to a life of freelancing and teaching (more thoughts on that here). My husband is an Art History professor with summers free and many opportunities for travel, and we decided the small hit to our income was worth it for the sheer flexibility of my new career. And it has been 100% worth it, not least because I’ve made travel a central component of my life, and I haven’t looked back, traveling for work (teaching study abroad students), to visit friends and to simply see as much of the world as I can on my limited budget.

I share my love of travel today with college students, leading study abroad trips in Italy. — With our study abroad group in Napoli, learning about the mafia, 2017.

In Lieu of Postcards won’t necessarily be your typical travel blog, however. While I do travel frequently, my husband and I don’t live the #vanlife that’s so popular these days, that nomadic existence of life constantly on the road. We are middle-class people with jobs and responsibilities, after all. I see this blog as an outlet for my writing, not simply to document the places I’ve been and the experiences I’ve had there (though it will certainly be that). I’d like to explore travel and wanderlust more deeply, as states of mind. I plan to supplement the travelogue model (went here, did that) with investigations of the quirks of places I visit, their history, and the attendant pop cultural and literary associations that whirl around in my thoughts. I’m not a mountain climber, a gear-head, or much of a foodie (though like any traveler worth her salt, I appreciate good cuisine — and good puns), and you won’t see me striking meticulously glamorous poses or doing yoga on the edge of a cliff (spoiler alert: I fear cliff-edges). To summarize: I hope to write a blog that’s not just navel-gazing but thought-provoking, not aspirational (did I mention I don’t have much money?) but simply interesting — and perhaps occasionally inspirational — to readers out there who also love travel, whether it’s just a few hours or half a world away.

Did I scare you away with my long-winded thoughts? If not, I hope you’ll consider visiting me here from time to time, whenever that wanderlust mood strikes.

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