Category: travel

Pen full of Bliss

My passion for writing inspires me, enthralls me, enlightens me, and eases my burden, but when I go to put words on paper about my passion, I find myself blocked and I can’t explain what it is about putting pen to ink that so inspires me. Writing defines the essence of who I am and it is through my writing that the real me finds her voice. Tom Hanks had a line in the awe inspiring movie Philadelphia where he said, “I love the law.” Writing is just that basic for me: “I love the language.” I love the way words feel when they dance off my fingers and onto the keyboard. I love finding just the right word to express what I’m feeling. I love it when my words right an injustice, touch someone’s heart, or just make someone stop and ponder another point of view.

Writing lets me think on paper and playing with words helps me clarify my thoughts. I write technical documents, emails, and manuals at work and some people would find that tedious and dull, but I even enjoy playing with words and finding just the right word to describe an SAP transaction. Some people would say that is a sickness, but I view it as a love affair with the English language.

Screenplays, novels, letters to the editor, self help books, journals, blogs, and essays. I’ve written them all and they’ve all changed my world in some way. Screenplays I write with the hopes of being sold, but despite never selling one of the three I’ve written, I still love writing them because they let me bring an entire universe to life in 120 pages. You notice I say bring a universe to life and not create a universe. That’s because sometimes when I get into the flow of writing, it feels like I’m just describing events that I’m seeing on a screen in my head. The characters end up having lives of their own. The interesting thing about my scripts is that I’ve learned something about myself from every character I’ve written. From Jennifer I’ve learned to tap my inner strength; from Mo I learned that I’m capable of more than I give myself credit for; and from Clare, my newest heroine, I’m learning that I’m capable of forgiveness and letting things go.

I wrote my one and only novel to help me dig through some deep seated fears and resentments. What I found was that novels weren’t my cup of tea; there were too many pages to fill up, and too many words to write. I didn’t like having to write transitions and having to come up with a zillion ways to say “said.” I don’t have that issue with screenplays as I just put a name and what they’re saying and that’s that.

Letters to the editor are calls to action; they are my way of telling the world about injustice and tyranny. They always say the pen is mightier than the sword and when I pick up a pen, I feel Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson standing over my shoulder extolling the virtues of striking a blow against tyranny through the written word. Not that I think showing inappropriate TV shows or rude people at high school graduations are as important as Revolution, but I feel a sense of patriotism when I exercise my right to question the world around me.

The Portable Coach was written at a time when I needed to reinvent myself. I’ve always figured out that I learn best by doing and explaining, and that’s what writing The Portable Coach allowed me to do. I was able to internalize the processes that I needed to go through to change my life by writing about them and explaining them so that other people could learn how to changes their lives.

Journals are my most personal of writings and I have a stack of them in my grandmother’s wardrobe that detail the journey I’ve taken from girl to woman. Some of them are excruciatingly boring and whiny as I detail all the petty injustices that filled my world at the time they were written and others show insights into myself that I’d forgotten. I never edit my journals and they are always about the free flow of words onto the page. In some ways, my journals serve as my very own therapist and at $2 bucks for a notebook, they’re a little cheaper than therapy.

Essays and blogs go together in my world as my blog really is a series of essays about things that matter to me. Blogs let me tell my story and the lessons I’ve learned from loving it. My blog helps me sort through my feelings and gain the kernels of truth that are inside each experience I have. I’ve learned since I’ve been blogging that when I keep my focus on finding bliss and balance in all experiences, I do. When I don’t focus on it, it is too easy to become unbalanced and focus on the negatives instead of the bliss that surrounds us every day, if only we go looking for it.

Unlike my journals, my blog is meant to be read and shared and it’s disheartening when days go by without any new clicks showing up. But then when I don’t check the stats for a few days, sometimes I’ll find that quite a few people read my blog and that is bliss indeed.

Balance Between the Worlds

Beaches are among the most magickal places on earth as they serve as an ever changing boundary between the world of water and the world of earth. I’ve always loved standing on the beach and letting my feet be licked by the water: sometimes the water just kisses my toes and a few waves later it splashes my knees. It’s a magickal place that’s not quite earth and not quite water.
We went to Illinois Beach State Park today for Caitlin’s birthday and the beach was wild and deserted: a place of beauty and mystery. We walked over the dunes to where giant glacers had moved the earth herself to create rock creations. The earth isn’t done changing though as these rock creations are now being licked smooth by the waters of Lake Michigan. The rocks are uneven and create crevices where water pools as the tide washes in and out.
Caitlin ran and danced with the waves running into the shallow waves, then stepping back as the waves came higher and higher. She laughed and played and I grew nervous as she walked deeper into the water and started to call her back, but then she pulled herself back and sat on the damp sand in the land between the earth and water. She crossed her legs, stilled herself and became the picture of calm as she stared out at the boats on the water.
Feeling uneasy about her being so close to the water, I wouldn’t let myself relax until my husband came over and perched on the pier above both of us, sitting like a silent sentinal. I knew that once he was there I could relax as he would watch out for both of us. I found myself a niche in the water smoothed rocks where I could dangle my feet in the water and I let myself feel the waves kiss my toes and the sun kiss the back of my neck and I let the tension flow out of my body and be watched away by the waves.
Looking out at the lake, I could see the sun reflecting off the blue water and colorful sailboats skimming across the waves. Life felt uncomplicated as if all that mattered where the elements of sun, surf, and sand. The deep sense of calm I felt driving home is something I will strive to recapture on days when life seems hectic, rushed, and way too complicated.

Bliss Tea

My love affair with tea began in China. Before I ventured to the land where tea was born, I thought of tea as a weak drink for old ladies, but China changed that and I realized that tea was a vestige of civility and calm. The first weekend I was in Suzhou, we wandered downtown and into a little tea shop that was filled with clear canisters of all sorts of tea. I still wasn’t sure I’d enjoy “real” tea so I hedged my bets and bought rose petal tea which when brewed was amazing. The sweet scent of roses reminded me of a beautiful spring day and the delicate taste wasn’t the weak and wimpy tea from teabags I remembered from my youth, but a taste of summer that made me want more.
Wandering the streets of Suzhou, I happened upon a store selling beautiful pottery tea pots and I bought a tea pot with a dragon head to remind me of the beautiful time I spent in Suzhou. Another store had a tea pot with a dragon swirling around it and it to had to come home with me.
One of my last nights in Suzhou, we were wandering downtown and I spied this beautiful delicate porcelain tea set that I knew I had to have. It was a beautiful and delicate blue with green swirls and a beautiful golden dragon swirled around it’s base. I had seem a similar one in purple that had been out of my price range so it was with bated breath that I asked the price of the blue tea set. The lady wouldn’t bargain with us at first and asked us instead to sit down and have a cup of tea with her and her family. She made us Chinese flower tea with a jasmine blossom that bloomed when hot water was poured over it. That was the moment I fell in love with tea as I realized the beauty and majesty that could surround it. That was the most delightful cup of tea I ever enjoyed as I sat at that little shop in Suzhou and drank tea with strangers and friends. I did end up buying the beautiful tea set and after the gracious hospitality, I didn’t have the heart to bargain much.
Amsterdam also taught me about tea as I found this beautiful little shop selling all sorts of herbal teas and tea accessories. I bought the most magickal tea in this little shop a blend of apples and rose hips that was pure magic to drink. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything similar in the states so until I make it back to Amsterdam, I won’t be able to enjoy that blissful tea again.
My current favorite tea is Caribbean Breeze by Teavana. It is a blend of strawberry and raspberry pieces with bits of kiwi passion fruit and citrus peel thrown in for good measure. This morning, I brewed a cup of Caribbean Breeze in my Chinese tea pot and sat outside enjoying the warm weather and the breeze. It was very blissful to sit under my magnolia tree, Maggie, and listen to the sounds of summer. I heard the birds chirping, the kids playing ball across the street, and someone mowing the yard a few houses down. The warm sun was tempered by a slight breeze and I felt like in this moment in time, I truly knew bliss.

Balancing Fatherhood

This will be my first father’s day without my dad and it’s made me realize how fortunate I am to have had a father for all of my childhood and well into my adult life. It’s also made me stop and think how different a father my husband is than my dad was.

My dad was a typical dad of the 60s and 70s who was the primary breadwinner while my mom took care of the kids and the house. But that’s not to say that my dad wasn’t involved in our lives. He was at every school function, vacations were spent with the kids, and he was home for dinner every night. I adored my dad and I know that he truly wanted what was best for me.

However, in retrospect, I’m able to realize that despite my dad’s pride in my talents and grades, he was still enough of a chauvinist to think that women shouldn’t compete with men for jobs. I remember talking to my dad about a woman applying to be a director at a company I was working for and he promptly lectured me about why women shouldn’t apply for those jobs because if she got it, she’d be taking it away from a man with a family to support. I couldn’t believe that in the 1980’s, my dad still held such old fashioned beliefs. Even though I was in my late 20s at the time, it was still a bitter pill to swallow to realize that the dad I idolized wasn’t perfect.

The funny thing about my dad is that his ideals about women taking a backseat to men never seemed to apply to me and he was always proud of my successes. Even when he was in his last few months of life in a hospital in Iowa, he was bragging to his nurses about his little girl’s career successes. I’ve long since forgiven my father for that comment as I realize he was a product of a generation where men were breadwinners and women were homemakers.

I’m truly fortunate that I married a modern man who takes great pride in taking care of our kids. When our kids were young, he was the one that stayed home with them and changed all their diapers and made sure they had their bottles. Twenty years ago he was an oddity and it was made even worse by the fact that we spent the first three years of our son’s life living on an Air Force base on Okinawa, where as a stay at home dad he was a social outcast. He valiantly took our son to play groups even when he was left sitting on a bench alone while the women gossiped about what kind of man would let his wife be the breadwinner.

That hurt my husband tremendously, but he loved our son enough to keep going to those playgroups so our son would get to play with other kids. He also loved me enough to support my career because he knew it made me happy. That’s not to say that life was perfect and that we never argued, but he always put our kids’ well being above his own needs.

Unfortunately for my husband, he married a stubborn and sometimes selfish woman who never realized until much later the sacrifices and hardships he endured for the sake of our family and how much he sacrificed so that I could live my dream of living in Japan. Until I did a stint at home with the kids when they were in grade school, I never realized how hard it was to juggle kiddie obligations and your own sanity and I had help as we lived by grandma. I honestly don’t know how he managed to do it stuck on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific with a wife who traveled every month.

So in honor of my husband, my dad, and fathers everywhere, I’d like to say thanks for the time you spend with your kids and the sacrifice you make.

Working for Bliss

Sometimes bliss and balance come about naturally and other times you have to work really hard to bring them into your life. Today was one of the days when nothing seemed to go right and I spent the day in a perpetual state of stress. It started off this morning when my husband and I continued the sniping that we started last night. I’m still not exactly sure what started the sniping. His viewpoint, of course, is that I started it by nagging and I’m absolutely convinced that he started it by being rude and condescending. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Our daughter got up grouchy because she was out too late last night at prom and because she said that her father and I woke her up with our arguing. Then Sean got up and had the same complaint. Interesting, because we hadn’t really been fighting, there’d just been a few sharp words exchanged. We went out for breakfast and life calmed down for a few minutes, except when the kids had to tell me I was being bitchy because I reminded the waiter he’d forgotten my pancakes. Apparently, asking for something the waiter forgot is now rude and condescending. Go figure.

After breakfast, my plan was to run some errands that had gotten neglected during the week. The first stop was downtown Arlington Heights where I needed to pick up a handbag I’d left the previous week and my daughter had to pick up her new glasses. I parked so I could go get my bag and she could get her glasses. No sooner than I’d started walking down the street then my phone rang and it was my daughter berating me because the optometrist was closed and if I’d have called ahead we could have been there on time, blah, blah, blah. Never mind that she is 17, they are her glasses, and she is quite capable of dialing a phone to find out their hours. It was all Mom’s fault, just like world hunger and the last war that broke out.

The next step was the garage to get a new front tire. We headed up to Mt. Prospect with my Blues in the CD player and me looking forward to a chance to relax and listen to music that I really love. Fat chance of that. As soon as she got into the car, daughter dearest plugged her iPod in and started cranking out depressing and stressful rap. I reminded her that she was just along for the ride and that I really wanted to listen to my music. She gave me an earful about how boring my music was and how it gave her a headache. So we decided that we’d make the trip with no music.

When we got to the garage, I walked in and asked them to put the cheapest tire they had on the car. The bill was going to be $80. Not a big deal for an unexpected expense. My daughter and I walked over to the bookstore to wait and we spent time just chilling, browsing, and then reading the books we’d decided to indulge in since the car wasn’t as expensive as I thought it was going to be. We walked back over to get the car and the mechanic told us that we really needed to get another of our tires replaced as the steel thread was showing and it was dangerous to drive on. Looking at the tire, I couldn’t help to agree so I signed up to buy another tire. It pushed the bill to $180 (I’m not sure how 2 times $80 became $180, but apparently they also charged me for rotating and inspecting my tires. Not a lot I could about it after the new tires were already on the car.

We left the garage to drive up to Grayslake to get a Rat Zapper, which we’d heard was one of the most effective mice eradication tools available. After an hour on the road in rain and heavy traffic, we pulled into the address that was listed on the Website and found the store had closed several months ago. Okay, so it was time for plan B. There was one other store in the area that carried rat zappers, so we headed over to Lake Forest. We got there in time to find that they’d sold the last two rat zappers that morning. I gave him my name and he said he’d call me when they got more in.

On the way home, my daughter began complaining about the fact that her pupils were two different sizes and this was obviously a sign of a brain tumor. For those of you who don’t know my darling daughter, despite the fact that she’s very active in debate, the newspaper, and she walks to and from work most days, she is a very sickly child who comes down with a new disease every week, usually after spending an afternoon surfing WebMd. No matter what her symptoms, she always has the most dire disease known to man. Of course, when we take her to the doctor she is either fine or can’t describe her symptoms. Her whining was the last straw and I snapped at her and reminder her that we’d run up thousands of dollars in medical bills over the last year for her without the doctors finding anything. Of course, then she was offended and hurt and I let like the lowest form of dirt for snapping at her. After that she was quiet and I was left to stew in my guilt over being the worst parent in the world.

The real question, of course, was whether or not I could salvage any bliss or balance from such a rotten day. The answer, of course, is that there is always bliss or at least a sense of balance to be salvaged if you’re willing to work for it. I stopped on the way home to pick up take out so that at least I didn’t have to listen to everyone asking what’s for dinner while giving me that pointed glance that tells me I’m lower than a slug for not having a four course dinner on the table.

Once the dinner problem was solved, I went outside and picked some of my big showy peonies to bring inside to brighten my desk. The look beautiful in the blue milk glass vase that game with the flowers my husband got me for Mother’s Day. That of course reminded me that he really does love me and that he does do a lot of thoughtful things for me. The next step in the quest for bliss was to cut up a granny smith apple to enjoy. I sat at my desk, bit into the tart and tangy flesh of my apple and enjoyed a sensuous burst of flavor that helped improve my mood immensely. Putting on some good blues and looking around at all my favorite things actually put a smile on my face. The photos of my kids growing up reminded me what sweet and wonderful kids they really were and that I’m fortunate to be blessed with such terrific kids. My ink drawings of Mt. Fuji reminded me how lucky I’ve been to have traveled the world. My “Rosie the Riveter” lunch box that my husband bought me in Madison, Wi made me smile as I remember that wonderful trip and how much my husband loves and supports my interests. It also reminded me that a lot of people had faced a lot darker days than the one I’ve having today and had lived to tell about it.

The final step in my transformation from blah to bliss was sitting down at the keyboard and writing. Writing always makes me feel better as it helps me clarify my thoughts and see that even my darkest days are not that dark.

Walking on the Wild Side: Balance in Holland

Holland is truly a land of balance: there are beautiful cathedrals and centuries old waterways, but there is also a seamier side of life that everyone takes very much in stride. I had three days to explore Holland and I was determined to make the most of it. I arrived from Germany on a Thursday night and spent Friday working with my peers at our distribution center in Utrecht.

After work, I grabbed a cab and headed downtown Utrecht to wander around and soak up the culture. One of the most fascinating things I learned was that Hollanders bike everywhere. I saw more bikes that trip than I did cars. I had the taxi driver let me off downtown and I started wandering the streets and exploring the little shops. As I was walking I smelled pot and looked around in amazement that someone would be so blatant as to have weed on the main drag of Utrecht. Then I spied the “coffee shop” and remembered I was in a land where pot was legal.
I wandered down one side street and as I glanced in one of the windows, I was uncomfortable seeing a woman lounging in her underwear watching TV in front of an open window. After walking by, I looked back down the street and saw the red light above the window and realized that Amsterdam wasn’t the only town with a red light district. I enjoyed dinner that night in a little cafe along a canal and it was incredibly peaceful to sit and enjoy the scenery.
The next day my day started early when I took a train from Utrecht into Amsterdam. Arriving in downtown Amsterdam, I soon found the tourist district and wandered through streets full of stores selling all the latest in souvenirs from wooden shoes to ties emblazoned with windmills. I have to admit that I did give into temptation and bought my share of tourist trinkets. Wandering a little farther I started to feel a little high and as I sniffed I realized that the air was full of the distinctive scent of weed.
All around me were American tourists going gaga over illicit drugs being freely sold.
Wandering a little farther I came to Amsterdam’s famed red light district and rather than being titillated, I was saddened at the site of beautiful young women selling themselves in store front windows like puppies on display at the pound. Some women danced energetically trying to attract attention and others were lethargic with deadened eyes that shown they’d given up on their quest for “love” and had resigned themselves to whatever the world had to dish out. One of the strangest parts of the red light district was a courtyard surrounding a church. Ringing this ancient–but still active–holy place were windows full of young women displaying their wares.
Leaving the red light district, I caught a water taxi and toured Amsterdam’s ancient canals. Our tour guide explained that many of Amsterdam’s houses leaned because they were sunk on wooden pilings into the soft earth and if they were not sunk deep enough the houses would lean. We wove through narrow canals lined by beautiful turreted buildings that evoked a sense of wonder from this American girl. We floated past Anne Frank’s house and I was amazed and heartened that the lines to see where her brave family had lived during the Nazi occupation stretched for blocks.
All too soon my day in the wonderland of Amsterdam came to a close and it was time to fly back to the States. Amsterdam is definitely a place of contrasts and the balance seems to work well for them, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable in a country where ancient works of art share space with women degrading themselves in store windows.

Written Bliss

Letter writing is an old fashioned habit that’s having a tough time competing with the instant satisfaction available from email and text messaging. However, for people who grew up receiving real letters and cards while away from home, there will always be a place for the old fashioned letter.

Every so often I will open a drawer and find a letter from my grandmother who died over 15 years ago. I’ll stop, read the letter, and remember who I was when the letter was written. In the days before email brought us instant communication, people wrote letters when they wanted to communicate and those letters were a tactile reminder that someone out there cared enough to sit down and write me a letter. I probably wasn’t as good of a correspondent as my grandmother would have liked, but she saved all my letters along with everyone else’s. After she passed away, we found a box filled with letters she’d received from her family and reading those letters was like reading a history of our family. There were letters from my mother right after I was born talking about the cute things I was doing, there were letters from my aunts detailing the goings on in their lives, there were letters from me as a child, and there were letters I wrote from college. The college letters were carefully sanitized so that grandma didn’t know all the trouble her little darling was getting into, but there were stories about my classmates and teachers that I’d forgotten.

Letters are a way to share our lives with those we love and to let people know that we’re thinking of them. Right before my Uncle Gene died, I sent him and my Aunt Ethel a postcard from Mt. Fuji to let them know I was thinking of them and to share the joy I was feeling about seeing one of the most spiritual places on earth. A few days after the funeral, my mom called to tell me that my Aunt had gotten my postcard and that it meant a lot to her to know that I’d been thinking of her and my uncle even while I was visiting Japan. Right then and there I decided that I’d make as much of an effort as possible to put my thoughts in writing and let my family and friends know how much I love them and that I was thinking of them.

I sent a lot of cards and letters when my dad was sick in the hospital, including one where I’d taken a picture of his dog Blue, put it on a card, and then written a letter from Blue’s perspective. My dad thought that was the most wonderful card that he’d ever gotten and it followed him from hospital room to hospital room. I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I would have liked with my dad before he died, but knowing I was able to bring him joy via cards and letters helped ease my guilt over not being by his bedside.

The letters I sent my mom right after my dad died–and keep sending–helped keep her going in those dark days when she was coming to grips with the fact that the man she’d shared 44 years of her life with was no longer by her side. The letters weren’t all long, in fact most of them were just a quick note card, but they made her realize that she was loved and that people cared about her. I tried to send note cards that I knew would mean something to her. For instance, I sent a card with eagles along with a note that said my dad was still watching over her. He’d loved to go out along the Mississippi and watch the eagles in the days before he died.

One of my blissmakers was to send cards to people I care about and I spent some time this afternoon at my desk writing cards to people I love. I sent a card to my mom with a quote about how inspiring art is because she starts her first art class in a few days, I sent a note to my childhood best friend reminding her of the love and laughter we shared hanging out at her grandmother’s, and I sent a note to my husband with a picture of “his building” downtown Chicago and a note that I was so proud of him for achieving his dream of living in the burbs and working downtown. It didn’t take me more than an hour to write three heartfelt notes, but I know that the joy they will bring to their recipients will brighten their entire day.

My kids think it is tremendously silly that I go to the trouble and expense to mail them and their dad cards when I could just give them the cards. However, I know the joy that comes from opening the mail box and finding a real live card and I’m hoping that someday they’ll find a note from me stuck in a book or a drawer and they’ll know that someone took the time to write them a note to let them know they were loved.

Ignorance is Bliss

When I think about the places I have experienced most deeply in my life, I come to the realization that the places where I’ve felt the most bliss have been places where I haven’t spoke the language, but places where I’ve had to just experience with no words to guide me. That’s an interesting realization for someone who has always been passionate about the written and spoken word.

My first experience as a traveling illiterate was the three years I spent on Okinawa. We lived on Kadena, Air Base so as long as I stayed on base, I was surrounded by the English language and never had to learn to speak Japanese. Parts of my three years there were magickal as I was able to walk the streets of Okinawa and observe the many cultures that shared the island. One magickal trip was to Naha City where I learned how Okinawa lacquer-ware, Japanese dolls, and sake were made. It was incredibly to get to experience the shapes, the colors, and the smells unencumbered by my monkey mind which would have snobbishly insisted that all that was to be learned could be learned through words. Instead, I had to watch the lacquer-ware being made to see how it was baked and colored. I had to watch the dollmakers using pins and ribbons to fashion dolls. I had to smell and taste the sake versus just reading about it.
My first solo trip to Toyko I ventured downtown alone. I had a map written in English that I was trying to compare to street signs written in Japanese. It was an amazing adventure as I found my way to the Ginza and gawked and gaped at the expensive shops and took in the smells of food cooking on street corners. I wasn’t feeling so excited to not speak the language when I took the wrong exit on the subway and ended up in a strange part of town with no clue where I was and no one around who spoke English. Luckily, I found my way to an embassy that had a sign in English and that same Embassy was also marked on my map so with just a little bit of trial and error I was able to find my way back to my hotel.

Although there were many signs in English in China, it was still an experience to wander the streets and hear a language that was not my own. I focused on the experiences and the places and not on the written word. Not wanting to miss a minute of our time in China, every night after work my friends and I would wander around town. We’d walk to the “little dark alley” where the best bargains were to be found and wonder at the treasures displayed before our eyes. There were silks and purses, bottles and carvings. It was a treasure trove of things to explore and purchase for our friends and family at home.

One night we went out to “Hot Pot” and enjoyed the experience of cooking our food in boiling broth at the table. Despite loving Chinese food, I had never experienced potstickers until that dinner and every time I eat them now, I’m reminded of my trip to Suzhou. The other food I learned to love in China was egg tarts, they are the most fantastical food full of a golden custard. Egg tarts had their own fan club at my former company and when we all got together we would reminisce about the egg tarts. Not all the food I had in China was quite so yummy, one night we went out for authentic Chinese food and we ate duck’s feet, cow’s stomachs, and pig’s ears. I didn’t enjoy any of it, but I was a good sport and tried it all.

I spent plenty of time in Germany as a traveling illiterate and I always felt slightly embarrassed when so many people went out of their way to speak English for me when I hadn’t learned any German. My friends and I had many wonderful times walking around Bremen exploring the sights and sounds and drinking in the local culture–and the local beer. On my last trip, I was fortunate enough to go to a German carnival and I got to wander around and explore and watch the kids riding the rides and eating cotton candy and the grownups watching indulgently. Hmmm doesn’t sound very much different than what we do in the states does it? That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a traveling illiterate: that underneath it all we’re all humans with pretty much the same hopes, dreams, and fears. We all want our children to grow up safe and sound, we all want to live in a peaceful world, and we all want a comfortable life.

One memorable trip as a traveling illiterate was the Saturday that I drove from Germany into Denmark. Driving a BMW down the autobahn was an experience in and off itself, but I was so
disappointed when I got to Kolding and realized that the town–including Kolding Castle– shut down at 2 pm. Not wanting my trip to have been in vain, I parked and wandered around the outside of the castle and thought about what life would have been like in the middle of the 13th Century when the castle was built. My romantic mind tells me it would have been wondrous to have lived in a castle and been surrounded by the finest things of the time. However, my more practical mind realizes I’m way too attached to central air and indoor plumbing to have really enjoyed myself.

 

Although part of me thinks I would have learned more if I would have learned the languages of the countries I visited, another part of me thinks that not learning the language forced me to have to rely on sights and sounds to explore the country and not just on what the words told me about the country.Despite the “handicap” of knowing English, some days I try really hard to be a traveling illiterate in my own country and really pay attention to what is happening and not just the words that are telling me what is happening. Instead of reading the signs about the animals at the zoo, I’ll actually watch the animals; instead of listening to the commentator talk about sports, I’ll watch the game. I can’t guarantee I’ll learn more, but I bet I’ll have a richer experience.