Traveling abroad, abroad

Much of my life vision includes travel. Meet any millennial and they would likely say the same thing. Each person with their own reasons. Travel for me is an indicator of success because it provides opportunities to grow and learn.  Growing up in an extremely white community and attending a 100% white school and a mostly white university was boring and uniform. Everyone, for the most part, was living the same life. Exploring a new culture gives me the chance to feel like an outsider, when before I always the insider.

Now, when I visit my tiny village in America, my new ideas about life, a new culture of my own, make me the outsider. I would rather live life on that side.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to Georgia (the country) with my friend and brother-in-law, Yousef. It felt like a double success to be traveling abroad while living abroad. It was Yousef’s first time outside of his own, very uniform culture. Watching him navigate and reflect upon the new environment was the greatest pleasure of the trip for me. The usual brown landscape of the Gulf was transformed to green, mosques to cathedrals,  palm trees to pine trees, and the temperature dropped from 41 C to 7 C.

With rolling streams, freshwater springs, green mountains, and friendly people Georgia really did seem like heaven on Earth. Yousef also got a break from driving, which he does most of the day, and also from the many responsibilities he has as the oldest remaining brother in the house. For once, I feel like he really got to breath deeply and see himself as an individual rather than part of the group. Many times after I would go to sleep after a long, tiring day, Yousef would go out to wonder the streets alone. I wonder what he saw on his midnight rounds, I wonder how he felt to be totally disconnected for maybe the first time in his life.

I had a memorable experience of my own on the trip. On the bus ride between the capital city Tbilisi and the mountain region of Stepantsminda I sat by a couple, Laura and Mike. Laura was from Spain and Mike was from the USA. Oddly, his mother was from a town quite near to my own. I had actually seen them the day before on a walking- tour of the capital but we hadn’t had the chance to talk. They started by asking me where I was from. I told them I was from the US but currently living between KSA and Bahrain. I told them that my husband is Bahraini but is currently working in the US. This is always very interesting to people. But, Laura and Mike understood my situation because they both had experienced living in each other’s cultures. Mike was currently working in Barcelona and spoke Spanish fluently. We talked deeply about intercultural relationships and how they have changed us. The way we eat, speak and think about the world. And suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone. I felt like an interesting person with an incredible experience and world-view to share with others. The three- hour ride flew by. At the end we exchanged contact info and said farewell.

On the final evening of our trip, Yousef and I chatted on the balcony of our AirBnb about our perceptions and experiences of the country. Although we had seen awe-inspiring mountains and ancient historical sights, the greatest memories of a place are always of the people and culture. He told me that it was the first time he had seen women working in so many different positions. “Women are everywhere here!” he said. We also talked about the general difference in work-ethic that we saw. In Gulf countries, most low-income jobs are done by foreigners. While in Georgia, the Georgian people are the taxi-drivers, restaurant workers, and cashiers. The Georgian people don’t view themselves as too good for these positions because making a living is more important than pride.

When entering his village in Bahrain, he laughingly said “No freedom here, huh?”

I nodded in agreement.

Travel is a personal journey. It brings us in close contact with ourselves and makes us ask meaningful questions about the way we live our lives. It shows us that there is not only one way to live, and thank God for that.