I’ve always loved travel, from the 45-minute ride to the next county, to the three-leg flight to Eastern Europe.  To entertain myself as a child, I would spin a globe, close my eyes and point to a destination.  I would then go to the library to look up the spotted location.  My 80 pound frame struggled with the heavy volumes of the New World Encyclopedia, which seemed like big lead bricks. I spent hours in the library, soaking up information on Lichtenstein, Bombay and everywhere in between. In the pre-digital era, entertainment could be had with a good book, a piece of paper, pencils, globes, and pure imagination.

While I can’t say that I extensively traveled as a child, I was fortunate enough to visit my family’s natal land of Mexico, which opened my eyes to the reality of a completely foreign existence to my small town American experience.  I took in the dizzying sights and heights that the big city and ancient pyramids afforded me, smelled the sweet odors of corn tamales on the Mexico City streets mixed in with the putrid perfume of sewer water.  It was then that my unquenchable thirst for exploration began.

In middle school, we students were given the opportunity to connect with children of the same age in distant lands.  ‘Pen pals’ they called it.  This was an exciting prospect, to receive a name I could not pronounce; with an address that I had to make sure I correctly spelled on the envelope, and to wait with anticipation a response.  Aah, the days of snail mail. My first pen pal was Mervi, a Finnish girl from a town called Kokkola.  I ran to the library to find such a place, a land I never knew existed in my 11 years of wisdom.  Finland – a land so far away, so remote, so unimaginable.  I wanted to make sure I at least  knew where this place was on the map, to know its capital, population, official language, currency (the markka, now overtaken by the not so mighty Euro), and any other interesting tidbits I could gather. Continue reading →