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A motorbike passes by. I’m sitting alone in an alley so narrow that one couldn’t walk with four people side by side. The deep rumbling of the motorbike has left its trace in my chest and I silently sigh to myself. Shifting in my plastic chair, a whiff of mint passes my nose. I inhale deeply but the smell is already gone. I feel a soft bump on my leg and I look down, only to see a raggedy cat trying to get my attention. Its sweet eyes look up to me imploringly. I pet it for a while because its presence brings me comfort and I don’t want it to go. I feel the shade of the clouds shifting and I look up to the sky. The sun warms my face and while I’m trying to fill myself with the heat, a sad smile appears on my face. A laugh bursts out of the woman sitting across from me. Her grey curls flutter in the wind as she tips back her head as to give her joy more space. I smile despite of myself, because she looks as if she’s found herself a place in the world where she fits perfectly. I wish I had. Instead, this small seaside town has delivered me more complex feelings than I would´ve imagined. I expected to be feeling lonely by now, in this strange land with her unfamiliar people, but I don´t. I ask myself often how I could not be missing my mom, my love or my friends. This town, with her warm stone and hot tea, her ancient walls and deep blue sea, has made me feel more comfortable than I would´ve thought. It is familiar, though strange. I don´t recognize the trees, the beaches, the food or anything else. But what I do recognize is the people. They might be strangers, but I spot familiar mannerisms in every single one of them. The way the woman tosses back her head when she laughs, is exactly the same as one of my friends at university. Even the way the cat looks at me, is exactly how my own cat does. It warms and disappoints me simultaneously, because I wanted something new. I wanted to meet people that were different than what I´d been used to because I ached to learn and I wanted them to teach me. I wanted them to teach me how to see the world and how to live in it. But as the laughter of the grey-haired woman reaches me, I realize that traveling isn´t – and for me, never was – a way to ´find myself´. People here are not so different from the ones I know. They won´t teach me who I´m supposed to be. This is just a place. They´re just people. They have their problems and their inside jokes and they drink mint tea with their friends in the sun. We’re essentially the same. When I get up to pay for my tea, the street cat meows at me indignantly. Its muddy paws have stained my green dress while sitting with me but I don´t really mind. I look around while waiting for my change, and the woman with the grey curls smiles warmly at me. Her smile seems full of understanding, as if she’s familiar with my experience. One of losing the hope of ever finding yourself by swimming alone in strange waters. Her eyes seem to teach me that grieving for its loss is okay, but that traveling was never supposed to make me find myself, but to give me an opportunity to create myself. I try to return her smile as warmly as I received hers as I walk away. Walking around the corner of the alley, it suddenly occurs to me that I have probably been reading into her smile way too deeply. The woman just smiled at me. Nothing more. The lesson I believed to have seen in her eyes, is more likely one I taught myself. So, she did teach me something after all, in a way. I smile again, though this time, there is not one bit of sadness in it.