What I Learned from This Trip

What have I learned from traveling for a year?

The last homework assignment for my kids was an essay about what they learned about our trip around the world. I told them that Gregory and I had to do it as well. Here I am, in front of my laptop and not knowing what to start with. I know it will be me who has changed and not the people or the places around me. I know this by experience because I have been away before and I know that the biggest changes happen inside you, in the way you see things, your perspective changes and I believe that’s where the growing happens. Right now, we might not be able to see it because it is too soon, but once we go back to our routines and our daily old lives, we will see, feel and live the change.

I’m happy to say that one of my biggest dreams was to travel around the world. I always wrote in my journal that I wanted to visit more countries or just travel more with my family, but I always wrote them as a wish, a dream and I never really worked to make it happen. Well, this is the big lesson that you can really make your dreams come true. Sounds cliche but it is true. When we first start talking about traveling around the world, it sounded unreal and not very easy to do. Many people even thought we were crazy for doing this. Now that we are two weeks from finishing our trip, it doesn’t seemed like anything big, crazy or impossible. We met many people doing the same thing, it doesn’t seem as crazy as in the beginning.

I learned things that I already knew, maybe this time, I just put them in practice. I learned that you have to work towards your goal and just make it happen. Consistency and persistence are fundamental because it is easy to quit and throw away or even forget what you were working for. I think what stopped me from traveling more was always the financial factor. I learned with this trip that you don’t need to be rich to travel. We learned so many ways to save money and to go to places with a budget. I think people give up to their dreams because it takes effort and yes, traveling took a lot of work and effort.

People in the social media probably thought that we were having a year of vacations, they only saw our smiling faces in beautiful places. No one saw the picture behind, the arguments of where to go next, the fights when we were stressed looking for food or a place to stay. I think I got to know my family better because we were together all the time in very different situations where we all had an opinion. At first, it was hard but after 3 or 4 months, I think we learned to work as a team, we kind of assumed roles and worked together. For example, I noticed Sunshine doing the last check up in the appartments or hotels before leaving. I noticed Daniel guiding us with google maps when Gregory was busy. The kids definitely become more active helping with the planning and even doing more research of the places where they wanted to go and even how to get there.

I think we all learned more about each other because we had more time to talk to each other. We shared many more meals together than a whole year in California. Not having friends around was tough because there were moments were I could truly use a shoulder to cry with or just to complain about how tough life was sometimes. I’m sure Sunshine would have prefer to go shopping with someone else than her mom but since there were no friends around, we did it together. The trip definitely brought us closer and I will always treasure that.

Daniel and has always been my little baby, and i don't think that changed too much. What I did notice is that he matured alot. He felt useful and needed by all of us. I think he enjoyed being considered older and wiser and stepped up in his new role of knowing how to navegate google maps and taking us to places when Sunshine and I were lost. He definitely spent more time with Gregory and became his little mini me. He used to be mammas boy but after this trip, he became a grown up, very mature and secure of himself.

I have to admit that it wasn’t always easy traveling with Gregory. We had very tough moments where we even talked about divorce. It really crossed our mind but luckily, we learned that we only did it when we were really stressed and didn’t know how to handle the situations. We also learned than when things go smooth, we get along very well and that we do love each other. In other words, we learned that we need to work it out in stressful moments because there are only temporary and that we have more good moments than bad ones.

Finally, traveling around the world made me realize that there is more poverty than wealth, or maybe what I’m trying to say is that very few are the wealthy people and most of the population around the world are poor. There is such a terrible distribution of the wealth that it hurts to see so much unbalance in the world. I think Gregory and I became a little better about giving and helping those who were around us. We help, gave food and tip everyone we met where we went.

I also wanted to write about ecology and religion in this paper but I noticed that I’m starting to wonder, maybe those will be independent chapters in my future book to come!