let in on the secret

alexprzy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:51:00 GMT

Ok, so this being one of my introductory stories, let me just say that I am mildly offended by the community of travelers for not letting me in on this great and wonderful secret: there are Faraway Lands! I'm just kidding about the being offended part, it's just that I stumbled on this open world like a fifty dollar bill on the sidewalk and it's enchanted me even worse than that senorita from the Lounge bar that one night. It has always existed to me in romantic terms, in the distance, a place just a little bit seperated from reality, which consisted of suburbia and life lived in books. The World was always there, but we can take hold of it?! We can go out and make it our own, the romance and the dreams, make our own adventures and spin them into stories lived before our eyes! I've got a good bit of distance under my belt, above average I guess. Obviously the America stuff, twenty plus states, East Coast, Gulf, New York, childhood in St. Louis and the beginning and bulk of my life in grand, storied Texas (though California and the West Coast is admittedly the gaping hole in my resume). But the real travel all started with a ten-day medical mission trip up the Amazon River starting in Manaus last summer, and since then I've become involved with a nonprofit called Full Hearts at Texas A&M working in Mexico almost every weekend, and after the year ended a few friends and I took a two and half week trip through said beautiful country in an old renovated RV and I swear it was a miracle that it survived the trip, or that we survived the trip more like it. But that all happened in the last year, and its all just the beginning, I know. Just recently I've discovered the phenomenom of hostels (who knew there were so many of ya'll, who don't have any money either?). I'm just at the start of what's sure to be a long book of postcards and sunsets from every corner of the globe and its exciting. Thank you, community of like-minded people, for daring to Go - like Augustine said, "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." This is my pilgrimage and my story. See ya'll on the road!

the eagle will fade as in the epoch past?

alexprzy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:22:00 GMT

"It just worries me because, you know, all the great civilizations of the world got to a point where they all they cared about was...their own pleasure. They lost focus on what life was about. And they fell. And it scares me because I think that's where we're at now, and if we fall, it will be you and your parents and your children that have to deal with it." - Nana

Who can predict the turnings of history? The end is approaching, to be sure, but hell, its always been approaching. Maybe the world stage is being set for something to happen, something that will have entire textbooks devoted to it in the years to come. Something will have to happen soon regardless, since we can't just keep coasting along. Maybe the something is the fact that Africa is still decimated by disease and starvation and largely the rest of the world turns a blind eye; maybe the something will be a generation standing to "do away with the yoke of injustice," to "spend themselves on behalf of the hungry," to set the debtors free and care for the orphans and widows and celebrate the Jubilee.

I'm leaving in a week to go to Nairobi, Kenya to visit an orphanage there, and another farther north in Muralal. I'm a fledgling traveler, just out of my first year of college and I'm restless and ready to start my long journey. The only adventures I've had thus far have been growing up in Texas, spending a week and a half on the Amazon, and working in Nuevo Laredo every other weekend last year. And now, Africa...

Musings

let in on the secret

the eagle will fade as in the epoch past?