“You must love your job...” they all say. “You’re young, you get to travel, and you inspire others every day to do so too.” But, what they don’t know is that those are not the only reasons why I do it. I can’t say it is the need for adventure, bravery, ‘doing it for the gram,’ or any of that. You are twenty-six years old and you have been to twenty-six countries in addition to uncounted domestic travel. My first time out of the country was at eighteen years old to Ecuador and then later to study abroad in Italy. I caught that cliché, wanderlust travel bug and I continued to travel and worked abroad in Istanbul, Turkey. My mom once said, “I can’t keep up anymore, where are you going? Tanzania? “No mom, Tunisia. They are significantly different countries.” I can’t be mad though, my mom never finished high school nor has a passport to step foot outside the U.S. She knew I’d be on that very large continent of Africa to say the least. Being a mixed race, 1st generation college student, I did not understand how important these moments were to my personal growth and understanding of the world. Traveling was not something my family members did. To communicate despite language barriers or through body language with many people of different backgrounds and cultures is really what drew me in. When you are invited to someone’s home and they offer you a beverage, how do you feel? What about someone you do not share a common language with, but they are adamant about making you a coffee or tea because they are simply happy you are in their home? It is the connections I have made with people all over the world that has helped me see a greater value to bringing people together cross- culturally. In these same moments, I too began to find my space in the world. I can recall a time in Turkey when I taught fifteen five-year olds English. One child, Mehmet, clung to my side during a three-week period for two reasons: 1. He only ate soup and his mother made sure to bring him a soup that I was to warm up for him while the other students ate their prepared hot lunches. 2. My assumption is that because of what I look like, he thought I was pretending not to understand and believed I too spoke Turkish. On the last day, while he was still talking at me in Turkish and I was silent...he yelled, “TEACHER TOILET!” Ok, I took him to the bathroom, but everyone around me heard him and that he ACTUALLY learned something during this time of never speaking a word of English. I still don’t know whether my job was to be a babysitter or teacher while teaching English in Turkey, but either way I felt successful in that moment. PAUSE/FLASHBACK “Tell me about that time you led a group of ten young women to the Dominican Republic.” Oh, so this is a Spring break story, but not an all- inclusive resort Spring break story. The program provided an understanding of issues regarding education, children exploitation, migrants, race, denationalization, and the empowering work organizations are enabling in the communities toward the solution of such problems between Dominican and Haitian relationships. PAUSE/FLASHBACK “Tell me how many times you’ve been to Italy?” “I really can’t count them” “Ok, tell me why you went so many times.” I have a very strange and untraditional love story about falling in love in Italy. I really wanted nothing to do with him. It was only a three-month fling...I thought as time passed three years later. “That’s cute, a love story about an Italian man, right?” In short, while it is definitely a love story, a major take-away of this story has to do with my own growth and learning from my ex-boyfriend who is a refugee from Kosovo in Italy. It is through our relationship that I learned all about Italian immigration, politics and led to my passion and creation of a program dedicated to addressing topics beyond the traditional physical beauty of architecture, life, and food in Italy. Traveling has more than expanded my mind, but has also made me see potential in all humans despite barriers and personal setbacks through learning about other’s experiences and cultures. But truly, after all this, I have accepted Tanzania and Tunisia mistakes that my mom may make. She can’t always wrap her head around all these countries and stories. It is an opportunity that she never had, but feels thrilled that she can live these moments through me.