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Some people dream of careers but I dreamed of a battered suitcase with travel stickers. In my senior year of university I jumped at a chance to study in Cuba. I didn't speak Spanish, knew little of the country but where it was on a map and knew none of the other students. My dad's concerns about a communist country in my head I boarded an airplane. We didn't head to a resort or Havana. Our destination was Santiago. The city I spent a year exposing no not Chile, the one in Cuba. We stayed in hotels at first before we were placed with families. I wound up with a wonderful family with two young daughters who soon called me sister. My English Spanish dictionary was a fixture on the kitchen table as they spoke no English and my Spanish classes were going slowly. A week after I moved in I came into the kitchen one morning to find an old gentleman at the table. He spoke fluent English with a British accent but Jamaican slang. They often rented out other rooms and I thought he was staying. Over coffee we began talking. When he found out I was Canadian he started speaking to me of the men in red coats on horses. It took me time to realize he meant the RCMP musical ride. He had seen a video and had been fascinated. I don't pretend to be an expert but I told him what I knew. It was about twenty minutes in when my host mother came back from the market. She surprised me when she introduced the man as her father in law. I knew my host fathers parents lived on the main floor apartment but had not met them. The gentleman explained prior to the revolution he had gone to school in Jamaica where he learned English from an old Brirish woman. He has heard I was staying and decided to come up and meet me. I was invited every Sunday down for dinner for four months. My Spanish slowly improving but the man who became my Cuban abuello ofyen translated. We were kindred spirits. I was a history and cultural buff who if Wikipedia existed back then would have lived on it finding out random facts. And he was the same. He asked me about everything from what snow was like to what poutine was. I am still shocked he knew that word. And he told me about stories of the early days of Cuba after the revolution that even my classes there didn't teach. One thing you never learn from news or books on Cuba are the people. Within a week they called me family. When I came down with the flu not one but two grandmothers were there making home remedies for me. While I sometimes needed grandpa to translate even at the end, I only needed him for the words. The love and kinship was clear and universal. I took the experience with me. I made it my goal not simply to travel but to be involved. Not to sit in a resort or on a tour. Whether teaching in Asia, or working with special needs kids in the Uk, or even planting trees in Australia, it was about building a connection. And some how a simple cup of coffee and discussing men in red coats opened that door forever.