Walking through unfamiliarity gets me psyched for each passing hour. Being both physically and culturally foreign to everyone around me gives me that amazing feeling of excitement; I love how ignorance is excusable and I’m grateful to be in existence for the moments when there's just so much to learn. I forget about the person that is me because of the raging curiosity inside, screaming to be satisfied. I'm alive, not in but with the universe.
I've experienced mingling with extreme poverty and I’ve came across wealth and abundance, both encounters shot me equally with hundreds of questions. I’m pleasured with being puzzled, even more with arriving to eureka. When I’m on my boots, wandering through The New, I feel most alive. I picture myself in their shoes; I would always wonder how they perceive people like me – people who're always in awe for the new. Usually when I'm being foreign, you’d see me in a bicycle, going really slow, trying to acknowledge everything and everyone's presence. I go broke for food, not souvenirs. I take home memories, not material things.
In one occasion of living with a local family in Vietnam, I showed them my appreciation through offering most of the stuff I brought with me, I taught them basic English and I exchanged with them stories from where I came from. I accepted everything they offered me, I listened to all they had to say. I gave them little hope for humanity.
The total experience they provided me with, is just priceless. The best way to express my gratitude is to write and make them appear more interesting to other people, to promote tourism and to convince travelers that there is more to see behind the walls of major tourist destinations, that to really be united with the place is to gaze through the eyes and the reality of the local people.
