The above shot is Casey, my brother-in-law, Scott, and our nephew, Kalin on our way to do a little exploring.
I should fill in the gap a little: we loved Vietnam the first time around and knew we would come back but I don’t think either of us thought it would be this soon. The reason we made the jump to get back now, however, is because my sister, brother-in-law, and two nephews moved to Hanoi last summer to teach at an international school.
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Thanks to some wonderfully succinct advice from a great friend, we are doing our best to absorb and be a part of all of this with small steps making up the whole. Step one, get off airplane. Step two, get to bathroom. Step three, reconvene and find bus area....and so on, until we get to the hostel, or couch host, or farm. The steps don't necessarily have an end - even more so, they seem to always be able to begin again, wherever you need them to. It is grounding, present-making.
This process - or attention to it - was especially helpful through our first few days hitting the ground in Glasgow. For those of you familiar with Boston, imagine your first experience there being dropped off in the middle of Downtown Crossing or the financial district around 5pm and your hostel being right at the edge of both. It most certainly wouldn't be the same Boston we all know and love. For those of you not familiar, what I'm getting at is that it is important to remember that first impressions are not always an accurate portrayal. Also, things take time to gel - identities of cities and people are strikingly similar in that they are incredibly complex and unfurl at surprising times or in funny ways. Sometimes it is easy to forget that.
I've said it in an email to someone recently and it remains accurate - the translation to Glasgow from Reykjavik was an aesthetically bumpy one. Where Reykjavik seems to cater to a visitor with simplicity in design and transportation, Glasgow - though things are in English - seemed harsh at first. We were also in the midst of the first stage of the aforementioned realization, while plinking ourselves in the center of a big city filled with expectations. Alas, it took a day of simply observing that exact experience and having patience...with ourselves and the newness and with the incessantly on again, off again rain.
The sense of openness, possibility and mini-adventure that comes with just walking about in a new place, getting lost, pulling oneself through the confusion is reinvigorating. It works well for us to take these walks and we've been wishing that we brought a pedometer with us, to satisfy the documentarian urge. At the very least, we are psyched to have remembered our rain coats.
Location:Dunollie Terrace,Oban,United Kingdom
This is the magic of travel. You leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all it's richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space.Your return a different person. All you need to do is give yourself over to the unknown. It doesn't have to be on a vast, dreamlike arctic plain. It can be on a gentle stroll through a Wisconsin forest or on a street corner in Nairobi. What matters is that you leave the comfort of the familiar and open yourself to a world totally apart from your own.
- From Letters To My Son by Kent Nerburn
Location:Reykjavik, Iceland
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.”