How I stopped being a hesitant traveler

Hi there travelers,

My passion for travelling represents a big part of me. It defines who I am. I travel approximately once per month or sometimes even more. However, I wasn’t always this open to the unknown. There was a time I was scared of discovering a new culture or visiting a foreign country.

However, when I attended camp in Switzerland many summers ago, everything changed. On the day of my departure towards camp, I was so nervous. I was and still am a rather shy person. I was anxious of meeting new people, especially if they were from completely different cultures than mine, in a foreign environment. It turned out that I panicked for no reason as Swiss Camp was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to meet so many people from all over the world and actually become friends with most of them. I thought that culture differences would make me struggle to socialize, however that wasn’t the case. Camp Swiss showed me that even though we, the students, were coming from all over the world, we weren’t that different after all. We found lots of things in common and we bonded over many similarities between our cultures, even though one of us was from India and the other one was from Russia.

What I've noticed is that everyone missed their families while away in camp. One day, Alyssa, my friend from Russia, woke up feeling homesick. I go to the next room to my Saudi friend, Deema, and she was feeling the same way. Speaking to my other Indian and Japanese roomies, I realized everyone was missing their families, some more than others. None of us felt like going to breakfast and so one of the house mothers stayed with us and we all had a chance to express our feelings. This showed me that we are all similar simply by being connected to our families and our home. The value of family exists everywhere. This made me feel safe around my foreign friends. Furthermore, we all wanted to do well in school. In my French course, all students, coming from Spain, the U.S., Vietnam, Poland, Romania and Russia, were eager to learn and become better french speakers. This showed me another similarity between us and made me feel more connected than ever to people from different cultures. These are just some of the things that I've noticed as common between me and my foreign roommates.

Camp Swiss showed me that no matter where we come from, we humans all share common values that define us. Before, I was a hesitant traveler. I’ve traveled with my family before on family vacations however that didn’t involve a lot of exploring. However, at one moment everything changed. Overall, meeting so many amazing people from across the globe during camp Swiss made me shift my mindset of traveling, meaning I didn’t want to just travel for leisure anymore, I wanted to travel in order to meet the people, discover traditions and really have a taste of the destination I am going to. This realization made me become more open and want to travel as much as possible across the globe. It takes a trip abroad to overcome your fear of the unknown. Afterwards, I guarantee, you will fall in love with the world.

Right now my life revolves around traveling and around planning vacations and trips. The word hesitant doesn’t define me anymore. However, the word traveler does.