I love to travel. I love going to new places, eating new food, meeting new people, listening to new music, hearing new languages, taking new pictures. And sometimes when I travel, no matter how much fun I am having or how much I am enjoying all of the new things, I think about home. I tend to travel by myself for the most part, and sometimes I just want somebody or something familiar around me. I want to call a friend back home, or eat some familiar food, or listen to some familiar music. I bring my bible wherever I go (actually, on this last trip to Ethiopia, my bible was on my phone which made it extremely portable), and that always helps. God's love is always familiar and is always present, wherever we are in the world.
When I'm feeling homesick, I seek out people or experiences that have positive connotations for me. I think everyone probably does the same. If you drink coffee and are in a foreign country, aren't you relieved when you see a Starbucks? When I was with a group of teachers in China, some people did not like having dumplings for breakfast, and each morning they would make a beeline for the nearby McDonald's. However, when I first started traveling (I think my first overseas trip was to Spain/Andorra in 2003), I was surprised that I even thought about home. I had wanted to travel so badly, and then here I was, all by myself in Europe and having the time of my life. Why was I thinking of home as if I wanted to be there? But I was. And my first instinct was to go find a Persian restaurant.
One of my best friends is Persian, and her family sort of became my 2nd family. They essentially adopted me into their family, even though I was 20 years old at the time I met them. Spending so much time with them, naturally becoming a part of the family, was one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.
So when I traveled, it became a habit to get off the plane, get settled in to my hostel or hotel or friend's house, and then seek out the nearest Persian restaurant to kind of ease into my new surroundings. Some places were more diverse than others, and in some places it was pretty difficult or impossible to find anything different from the prominant culture. And that was okay too. After all, the new culture/people/food were the reasons I traveled in the first place.
In the past couple of years, this has shifted a bit. I travel to a new place, get settled, and then, instead of seeking out a Persian place right away, I seek out a Christian Science church or organization or Reading Room (the Google search for "Persian restaurant" comes 2nd :). I have been attending a Christian Science church pretty regularly for 3 years now, and it is like a second home to me. I also really enjoy meeting people in other cities and countries who attend Christian Science churches. I feel like when I am in a new place and don't know anyone, don't know the landscape, don't know the food, I can walk into a CS church and feel like I sort of know what's going on. I feel a sense of familiarity with the lesson (the same CS lesson is read all around the world on any given Sunday), the music in the hymnals, and sometimes even the people there. The CS community is pretty big, but small enough that I recognize names and faces from articles that they have written in the periodicals. Or maybe I attended a lecture that they gave when they traveled to Seattle. Or maybe they are a friend of a friend of someone who goes to my church back home. Whatever the case may be, it feels like home when I walk into a Christian Science branch church, no matter what city or state or country I'm in at the time.
It is funny how our sense of home changes and shifts throughout our lives. I still always make sure to look for Persian restaurants, because Persians will always signify "home" to me. But my sense of home is broadening and widening as I learn more and live more. And with each new experience, I find that there are always things, both little and big, that give me yet another feeling of being at home. It may be a dog park on a busy thoroughfare in Barcelona; a gelato shop in Ethiopia; a Shakira song playing in every Peruvian store and cafe, the same song that played in Seattle months before leaving for Peru. These things all make me feel at home, and feel connected to the place I happen to be in at that moment.
At one point I feel that the world will not seem quite so big. We are all connected, all wonderful beings, all a part of this beautiful existence. We are always home.
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