For the First Time Solo Traveler

I have heard some reports that people tend to travel in multiples, especially internationally. Good for them - that might be interesting. Really, traveling alone has its advantages, but there are quite a few things to consider if you choose to just get away and haven't the patience to wait for someone to join you (or the tolerance for having them along).

Blend in, if you can. 
In Malawi, I couldn't pull it off, but in Spain I could. Alone or with others, you are a target, but alone you are easier prey. Yes, you - the one with the great big backpack on your back and smaller pack on your chest. The only question is whether you will be a hard target or a soft target. There are plenty of people all around the world who thrive off of the misfortunes of tourists, and you need to prepare to minimize your risk. Be mindful of your clothing choices, so as not to stand out. Study the people and try to behave in a similar fashion. Remember, if you are running from the lion, you don't necessarily have to be faster than the lion, just faster than anyone with you. Tourists will stand out, and you may not be able to avoid it, just stand out less.

Preparation is key.
Of course, learn what you can about your destination ahead of the trip, but also use your protected time in the plane, train, or hotel to get your bearings so you don't have to break out the guide book or spend all your time on your smartphone out in public. I carry a small moleskine notebook in my pocket where I can put directions and notes; it's light enough to take everywhere and doesn't scream tourist.

Know your vulnerability.
Your first 24 hours in a new country or city are your most vulnerable. Try to have a flight that arrives in the daytime. Ports of arrival - airports, train stations, bus terminals - have people looking for travelers out of their element, and that's you. Arrange ahead of time how you will get to your hotel, and you will save yourself problems and frustrations. If an acquaintance can meet you there, even better. Otherwise, many of these places have information counters staffed with people whose job is to help you. While I can write a whole section on taxis, it's usually best to spend the money on a reputable service that can save you from walking the streets of a strange place alone with your luggage. Get a good grasp of the currency and what things should cost, because plenty of vendors will attempt to overcharge you. Also, once you are on your way in a new place, act like you have been there 50 times, so at least your apparent confidence makes you a harder target.

Talk to strangers?
Yes, your mother told you not to do that, and often it is good advice, but if you are traveling solo, you will be very lonely, and you will miss out on much of what travel actually is. A good rule of thumb is be wary of strangers who come talk to you. Odds are if you choose the stranger, he/she is probably not a serial killer, and you might be surprised by some kindness and/or good advice. Also beware of anyone who asks you too many questions, and do not give out much personal information; feel free to make up some details if you want and have some fun with it. Often I will pretend not to speak English, which makes escape of nosey strangers easier.

Find your niche.
For me, it is restaurants. For you, it might be art museums. Go where you feel comfortable and have knowledge of your surroundings. This seems like a no-brainer, but use these places to get familiar with the new city and pick the brains of the people working there. It's like being part of a club, because these are your people, and having people in a foreign country is tremendously valuable.

Volunteer.
This should be number one, but I am biased. Opportunities will likely only be available if you arrange ahead of time, and you should also take the time to properly vet an organization. Volunteering in a foreign land is one of the best experiences you can have in a new place. While you should do this because you actually want to help in some way, it can provide you with experiences you would have never found otherwise as a tourist. Also, you may make some great friends who are just excellent people.

Go to church.
Okay, obviously if you are not religious (or atheist) and not interested, this is not for you. However, many people have some connection to a religious institution. If that's you, take an hour on your given sabbath and check out the local service. You will likely be in a safe place, often historic and beautiful, surrounded by people trying to save their souls. Again, membership has it's privileges. Even if you are not a member, you are probably welcome and might even get some free coffee and cookies out of the deal. If you're lucky, they may ask you to read during the service and/or take you out to karaoke.

Location, location.
First of all, DO check in with a family member or friend from time to time; in case you do go missing, that makes it easier to track you down. DO tell your bank and credit card companies where you will be, so they don't cancel access to your money. DO register with your government or local consulate, in case of natural disaster or some other emergency. US citizens can easily register on the State Department website.
However, be careful how much information you put on the internet about your whereabouts. Do you really want a stranger to be able to look on Instagram and see in real time that you are an attractive woman on her third shot of tequila at your exact location?

Think when you drink.
Odds are, at home you have drinks with friends and at places you know. You know your risks there. In a foreign country, it's a different story.

Manage travel fatigue.
Odds are if you are in a foreign country by yourself, you don't mind a little down time and lack of conversation. Also, you enjoy wandering and discovering all that world travel has to offer. However, you may find that the stresses (and sometimes unfortunate circumstances) of long-term travel can add up after a few weeks alone. Don't feel like you have to be on the go all the time. If you are gone for a month, it's okay to go see a movie or drop in to McDonald's for an American coffee and a Sausage McMuffin. It's okay to take a day and just read by the river. Spend a little time with a change of pace doing something you enjoy, even if it's not something that that culture is known for.

Don't let any of the above dissuade you.
Maybe you have never traveled alone before, so the mere prospect seems a little daunting. If it's your first time, go somewhere you can speak the language. Go where you have studied or have some professional experience to which you can relate. If you can, go somewhere that you know someone - that doesn't mean you have to spend all your time with them, but it's great to have a contact. Go somewhere with a purpose, and the trip will all come together. Most places are scarier until you get there... and then you won't be able to imagine your life having never been.

Episode 2 - Connections

April/May 2015 - Having just left Maui, I was faced with two relatively brief layovers, when a change in plans occurred in the Philippines.

VIEW EPISODE 2 HERE:

https://youtu.be/apke2l4OGXQ

Preaching to the Choir

Members of the Our Lady of Fatima Parish Choir in Tacloban

I was still a little bit new as a lector at Our Lady of Fatima when I arrived for Christmas Eve mass and was informed that I should sing the Responsorial Psalm for the special occasion. This was not karaoke; this was a religious celebration with hundreds of strangers!

"You can do that, right? Well, we have asked someone to do it, but she is not here yet."

Am I allowed to say no? Luckily, she showed up and sounded much more angelic than I would have. Of course, any one of the choir members would have been an excellent alternative to me. It's not just me being humble; the choir with whom I have been honored to serve every Sunday I am in Tacloban, Philippines are really not only talented performers, but sweet and genuine human beings and devoted Christians. In fact, they make me want to be a better person.

We had a memorable Thanksgiving feast one week prior to the official American holiday before I departed the Philippines. True to tradition, we all spoke about the things we were thankful for this year. While it is difficult to to list them all, for me it has been a privilege to not only be considered part of a family an ocean away from the United States, but to have had the opportunity to stand with them and try to be my best self.

Brothers and sisters, thank you for your friendship that holds me to a higher standard, and thank you for the music that fills my soul with joy.

Happy Thanksgiving. 

Feeding Hundreds in Tacloban, Philippines

The Beginning of Barangay Kitchen

Prep Team from Our Lady of Fatima Parish

 

Barangay 83-C "Taguiktik"

My Friend and Interpreter Iries

Barangay 83-C Health Workers Volunteered to Assist

All Hands Volunteers from Project Leyte Serving the Food

Banana Nutella French Toast Sandwiches

Barangay 61 Basketball Court

 

Selfie with my Little Friend Rapunzel

 

It was a great day feeding over 750 people in several parts of Tacloban, Leyte, in the Philippines! We served french toast with bananas and apples for breakfast and made banana-Nutella sandwiches to distribute in the afternoon. Thank you to all of our donors and volunteers who helped make this a special day in honor of the survivors of Typhoon Yolanda.

Special thanks to Edbert Iman Babali for most of the great photographs captured that day.

Winterblue Strawberry Cake

Dinner out at Mexico Restaurant

"What do you cook for a last birthday dinner?"

That was the Facebook post I made two years ago today. I had been my dad's personal cook for nearly eleven months as he confronted his cancer. We ate a lot of pancakes in the mornings, a lot of soups for lunch, and so many different concoctions for dinner: Greek chicken with lemon, Spanish paella, Indian burritos...

Dinner usually started with a walk to the grocery store and had me doing research in my "Flavor Bible" to find the best new recipes. I can't stand using the same recipe over and over. Dad, of course, never cared about "fancy" food. He would have been quite content to have me rotate 8-10 old standbys as long as we went out to eat at least once a week. But, I figured if I was stuck in San Bernardino for an undetermined future, at least I would travel with the palate. Dad was the one who had been fond of taking me out to dinner growing up. He introduced me to cheesecake, ribs, and Frank Sinatra on the jukebox at an Italian restaurant. He had me flying across the Pacific every other year. So dog gonnit, I was going to take him around the world with my cooking, and we visited quite a few places. I named this little pseudo-restaurant operation "Winterblue," which is a combination of parts of both of our Indian names, and I tried to post as many of my creations on Instagram (@blueeaglerare) as possible. It felt like something for me to keep my sanity, well, that and Karaoke Tuesday at the Rustic Inn. However, what I hoped it was was a gift to show him where I had been and what I had tasted - all tailored to meet his preferences (well, except for lentils; he hated lentils, I found).

My mom had been meeting with me regularly and sharing fruits and vegetables from her garden. I don't think she knew about the karaoke, so perhaps this was her way of making sure I was okay. At this point, Dad was under home hospice care. I knew his days of chewing were nearly finished if not already, but I was determined to make something he might enjoy if he were able to. I finally arrived at the decision of Greek Steak that I copied to the best of my ability from one of our favorite restaurants in town - DJ's. Mom had brought over a whole lot of strawberries. Dad really loved strawberries, and really all sorts of fruits, so I decided to make a strawberry cake - from scratch, of course. That was the last food he ate.

Why am I telling you this? Yes, probably the least happy birthday you can imagine, but this blog is about discoveries. We are all tasked at some point to use our talents and experience for some sort of benefit to the world, I think. It doesn't always make sense at the time, but I would encourage you to go ahead with it anyway. I'm going to keep feeding people, if they let me. Hopefully it will take me somewhere good. It has so far.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Chasing Yesterday's Sunrise - Appreciations of World Travel

In a long solo journey, you learn to appreciate the unique qualities of time as it relates to place: one night with a fascinating new friend trying to get out all of your stories before dawn, one week in a hotel with a family not your own, one hour in a church with a congregation you will never see again. The idea of time is something man created. We found ways to measure it, yet there is nothing we can do to have any influence on it. Time marches on without negotiation, without prejudice, without malice or hope. In travel, just as in life, so much is subject to variables, change, and finality. These all play into what we do and where we are relative to the ticks on the clock. Thanks to the invention of flight, not only can a human actually encounter yesterday's sunrise flying over the Pacific Ocean, but the human brain can realistically comprehend both the size of the planet as well as our relative positions on it. In my five-hundred days and nights of travel - a very long time with seemingly infinite decisions - I found in the end a story that cascades finitely like paint from a brush on the canvas of my life's portrait. Within that story is a lens through which I wish the rest of the world could view.

You can certainly save a lot of money by approaching this understanding in the library with an atlas, some mathematics, and your choice of other books, however there is a restriction to the manner in which the "home" brain perceives time. At home, we generally conform to a schedule based on expectations - our boss's, our family's, or our clients'. Time in this regard, is often the ruler of our day and the master of our universe. Due to inevitable repetition, it is easy to take moments and relationships for granted; the brain is trained to think that there will always be a next time. To see it in terms of muscle memory, the "home" brain allows you to function more efficiently in a familiar environment. However, due to redundancies, we can limit the scope of our grasp outside of what we predict and relive on a daily basis.

In world travel, each day is a possibility - a blatant opportunity for discovery. The "traveling" brain must constantly observe, measure, theorize, learn, adapt, and keep the rest of the body safe from danger in ever-changing environments. While time is certainly a force to be reckoned with in making these discoveries, there is more of a freedom from the mundane captivities of time while abroad. Each day can be fueled by mysterious destinations full of nature, art, and profundity. The "traveling" brain picks up on magnificence, that - while it may not be able to fully grasp at the time - would otherwise go undiscovered.

Consider the confrontation our minds encounter at a funeral. Someone who played a special role in our lives ceased - often without warning - to exist in the human life form. The ceremony is the moment we truly accept the loss of the deceased after a lifetime of next times. Funerals cement a certain finality; brains finally register. That being said, a world traveler can be found to experience a funeral every day, in that there becomes a realization that with every bus, train, or plane, you may very well have lost something or someone from your life forever. It is in this continual pattern of loss and gain due to changes in place and time that the world traveler can learn to adopt a unique appreciation for the moment, as if knowing ahead of time when the next funeral will be. Given an extended journey with some degree of flexibility, the world traveler may attempt to cheat time and "death" by revisiting old destinations or familiar faces. This can be met with some measure of success, but just as you might imagine, trying to travel through time, cheat death, or alter destiny are like trying to capture all the beauty of the world on one canvas - quite exhausting... and ultimately futile.

Nevertheless, just as any rigorous exercise of the human mind such as educational study, pondering philosophy, learning a new job, or even falling in love, chasing yesterday's sunrise strengthens the muscle of possibility. The exploration of time and place to parts unknown - even if you cannot cheat death or alter destiny - pushes us all to seek answers to questions we would have never even thought to ask. With all its stresses and excitements, this may actually be what helps propel humanity to where it was meant to go in the first place - some mysterious destination that is artfully and profoundly magnificent.

I Can't Not Stand - A Former Coach's Perspective

I had inherited the habit of standing for the entire match from previous coaches of mine, although the trend at the time became that the soccer coach sits on the bench with the rest of the team. Discouraged and upset at our inability to play as I thought we were able one day, I took a seat on the bench to cool off. Coaches are quite cognizant that a myriad of actions, inactions, words, references, even intonations are crucial to conveying a message. I knew that just by sitting down, I was signaling my displeasure and frustration, but I only knew the half of it. Following our loss, my players walked off the field with sour looks on their faces. To my surprise, they were not as upset at their performance as they were with me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"You gave up on us; you sat down. You always stand," one of my players responded.

Dedicated as I was to my group of high school girls and our team's mission, that was a crushing statement. However, it was true and had a wisdom that I always remembered.

A simplistic, nevertheless accurate, way to look at America is that we are a team - a people bound together by circumstances, a common home territory, and necessity. Like all teams, we have our adversities - selfishness, ego, miscommunication, living up to past successes, and losing sight of the common goal or thread that binds us together. One element designed to keep us focused on the unity that is necessary for any team is our flag. Some view it as a piece of cloth, others see it as a tremendous reminder of what we can be or what we have accomplished, still others see oppression and fault.

What does it say when we decide not to stand and show respect for the one banner of our team?

America is not a monarchy. It is neither a dictatorship, nor an aristocracy. We are a democratic republic, and as such, we are a team of people responsible for our own success or failure. The flag does not represent some ruling elite that we can step back, take a knee, and defy in the name of protest. The flag is us and everything we learned in grade school that can be so right in an imperfect world of self-government. Our team fails often at many things - sometimes at events of great consequence. It may seem that kneeling for the national anthem is actually taking a stand against injustice, but what the rest of us see is that you are giving up on the idea of America. And any coach will tell you you cannot improve an ailing team by dividing it further.

Confrontation, however, is imperative. Except confrontation must be approached within the context of constructively working toward the common goal. I realize that polite discussion seldom solves deeply rooted problems. Oftentimes people need to be shocked into change, but disrespect always puts your adversary (or teammate) on the defensive and is unproductive. You may think that sitting out the national anthem is an effective manner of protest and showing solidarity with victims of injustice in this age of hashtag activism, but true meaningful protest is about engagement, rather than disengagement; sacrifice for a goal, not following trends; intellectual thought, not forwarding memes on social media; patient honesty, not jumping to conclusions; love, not hatred. I know it's hard to do all of this when people are getting killed, but protest is meant to be hard. I'm not saying don't act - act, we all must - but there are other ways to do it that don't signal you've given up on the team.

Raising awareness is only the first step. Too often in our culture today it is seen as an accomplishment, but true accomplishment occurs with a game plan, dedication, and hard work. Most sane Americans want to live in peace and harmony - free from fear and senseless violence. What's the game plan with taking a knee? Doing something is not the same as doing something productive.

Lastly, I will say that, yes, we are divided. For some reason, being out of the country for a year helps you see that even clearer. Not to neglect the reality of our problems, but we do seem rather unenraged by atrocities committed against black and other hued lives outside of our borders. Former Lakers coach Pat Riley may have included that in what he termed, "The Disease of Me." A team divided against itself cannot survive. We seem to constantly find ways to divide ourselves, and it is increasingly troubling. We can fix that, but we have to stand together.