chickity china

Yow! So my bro leaves in two weeks for Nanjing, China. He'll be there until early 2009 and I can't wait to visit. I think while I'm there I will make stopovers in Beijing and Shanghai. I wanna see all the culture-y shit too, you know, Great Wall, Mulan's Grave, etc.

I leave in TWO days for San Fran / Long Beach / Los Angeles! Hollerrrr. Gonna meet up with a plethora of randoms, v. exciting as well. Jose is giving me a memory card since mine was lost while camping once-upon-a-time, so expect 1000's of photographs.

I was so amped about my Cali trip as well as the RNC roadtrip with Ken that I started bragging about them to my roommate. She smiled warmly at me and said, "How nice for you... I'll be leaving for two weeks right when you get back."

"Oh sweet, where're you going?"

"Oh you know - I thought I'd just jet off to Barcelona for a few days - my parents are flying from Cairo into Montreal then and I want to be away - and then I'll probably head to the south of France to stay with [our Williamsburg neighbor and her longtime friend] in his villa there. I'm going back to Madrid after Nice and then to the Spanish Coast to stay in a friend's empty house... probably no longer than two weeks, but definitely not like, a month."

All said off-handedly, like she was letting me know she was off to the deli or something. When I was talking about MY trip, domestic-not-international-thank-you-very-much, I was practically frothing at the mouth with excitement. Of course, she is a model so she has a lot of world-traveling experience whereas I count London, Disney World, and Niagara Falls as my excursions of note. We working-class non-models / non-Rich Kids have to EARN our frequent flier miles, the hard way.

That being said, I, along with billions of other personal ad placers, truly enjoy traveling. Roommate, friends and I have had many deep conversations about the intrinsic value that global exploration can add to your outlook on the world. Yet it is one of the most expensive and time-consuming hobbies out there. I am just on the cusp of jet-set affordability, and when I say jet, I mean regular plane. When Roommate says jet, she means actual jet. Ah, to live the glamorous life.

A peripheral friend and fellow party-goer once ticked off her list of preferential attributes in a significant other:
"Smart, handsome, well-read, educated, multi-lingual...oh, and of course, well-traveled!"

This girl was 22 at the time. Notice she didn't mention a comfortable socioeconomic status - however, I think this preference is implicitly implied with the globe-trekker caveat - and she ends up sounding cultured and discerning rather than like some gold-diggin' broad. I think insisting upon someone being "globally well-traveled" before the age of 25 - or even 30! - is tantamount to socioeconomic exclusion.

Yes, I'd LOVE to have been to France, Italy, South Africa, Cairo, Shanghai, Baghdad etc. etc. etc. But while this girl was off cruising the Mediterranean / Baltic / Pacific 10-12 times during high school and college, I was working 40+ hours a week to be able to pay all of my own expenses. While this girl was living in a parentally subsidized apartment, and hopping the Turks AND the Caicos with the surplus slush, I'm paying rent, buying groceries, and gettin' biddy on the rest. It's HARD to travel when you work 40+hours a week, 52 weeks a year. In the past year, I've taken ZERO of my vacation days because I wanna get ahead. I don't want to be seen as the officemate who is always globe-hopping and party-stopping or the one who works in order to pay the bills instead of aiming for progression and succession.

Please Note: I don't begrudge anyone their happinesses. It's amazing that some people have been afforded the opportunities to see the world and I think they're all the better for it. In fact, I too am hypocritically attracted to those that are, in a nutshell, "well-traveled", because I am not and I am a strict devotee to the Doctrine of the Attraction of Opposites. I simply dislike the fact that many of these individuals view themselves as being somehow more enlightened or informed as a result of their wanderings, when in fact they are more typically just vulgar sight-seeing tourists gorging the craws of revenue-starved cities. [I ESPECIALLY hate when trust-funders predictably head to Africa as an alternative to actually studying / working for a semester, and profess their "connections with" and "empathy for" the poverty stricken natives / refugees. They invariably claim to have forged meaningful friendships - these are quickly forgotten however, when Richie Rich heads back to the old US of A and Kwame can't afford to follow / mail any letters. But Richie will post the meaningful photos of himself wearing the traditional African garb, posing with charmingly skeletal local schoolchildren, straight from his Nikon Digital SLR to his new custom lime-green PowerMacbook and then on to the Book of Faces / HisSpace almost immediately, which pretty much puts him on par with like, Gandhi. And stuff.]

I've already decided. When I have the income that I am comfortable with, I'll start going away more often. I've not been able to travel much so far, but that will change soon, I hope, because hard work often results in a better job and higher pay. And anyway, it's not like Spain is the only place worth going. I've been camping on more mountainsides, exploring inside more caverns, and swimming in more lakes, rivers, and streams than most international travelaholics - you can find beauty almost anywhere.

In this year alone I'll be able to go to California (10 days), US cross-country roadtrip (9 days) AND head to China (10 days). But you know what? I think I'll enjoy each and every one of these vactions ONE THOUSAND TIMES more than those people who, by birth and privilege, have already seen the world. Because when you make it yourself, it just tastes sweeter.