I wrote this in Brisbane, while sunning, sneakily enjoying a hard cider, and openly enjoying a cheese sandwich on the riverbank.
July 18. There are a few things that I miss about home and can't have right now, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I could very easily make it a bad thing, but instead I'm going to step back and observe what these feelings of longing say about me.
I miss my labels. Surprised? I should expect so. We work so hard to break free of the boxes that others put us into - in fact, I think one of the main reasons we travel is to get out of our everyday context and allow people to just perceive us as we are.
But I miss having the culture that comes with my labels! I chose them carefully, and by doing this, I also chose the groups of people that I interact with. It is especially strange to be in a big city that is well suited for young people and be on the outside of the groups where I usually belong. Here, I am not a climber. I am not a city biker. Nor am I an engineer, a Stanford grad, or a consultant.
Instead, I am first of all a woman, then a tourist, and then an American - all of these come with their own stigmas. If you spend a few minutes talking to me, you will realize that I am slightly older than all of the 18 years I look and also a bit of a treehugger, considering that I didn't bring any jeans (or stilettos or make-up) with me and considering that I got extremely claustrophobic in Sydney.
Even though these labels are slightly nicer than just being perceived as a Yankee teenager, when becoming travelers, we also become sort of faceless. By being good travelers, we can improve the tourist image abroad, but we lose our cultural niches because we are never in one place long enough to find and re-establish it. This is an important experience! It is liberating to be faceless. It is educational to see the differences between who we are at home and abroad, and we can better remember our culture by living through the absence of it.
The experience is even stranger in a place like Brisbane than in a place like Nepal - my favorite example. In Nepal, people are more different from me, so I try to learn how they are and perhaps try to be like them so that I can better understand these differences. Here in Brisbane, the locals are quite like me, but I am not like them because I am just passing through, temporarily stripped of the items and activities that I would have in common with them if I was in my own context. But being outside of that context forces you to get creative and think outside of your typical habits. Having a poor wifi connection in your hostel and a much smaller bank of friendly acquaintances to draw on forces you to get the hell off your phone and go do things. New things, in a new place, alone.
For example, right now I am picnicking on the bank of the Brisbane river, illegally drinking a hard cider that is also slightly out of its element, disguised in can instead of bottle form. It's hard to know if I would go on an outing like this at home on a random Saturday afternoon because when I didn't have homework, I was usually off on a backpacking trip. I think it's easy to get caught up in the briefness of the weekend and feel like you always have to be doing something - be it an errand or something fun. That's the problem with travel agencies as well - they try to make you feel like you have to see everything, do everything, and ideally have a paid expert on hand to plan and orchestrate the whole thing. I have been so guilty of overplanning for the entire past year that I've been missing out on the simple pleasures of enjoying a lazy Saturday afternoon with all the space I need to think, to create, and not have a care in the world. Hopefully I can capture some of this Aussie laid-backness and take it back to my real life!
