About one year ago, I pulled a letter out of the trash. Unbenounced to me, this letter would soon begin to change how I saw the world and how I thought of everything in it.
This letter was one inviting me to travel through People to People. I had been receiving these letters for years, and every time I inquired about this possibility, the reply was disappointing: we did not have the financial means to support this desire. This time it was different. A fire in my heart began to burn, and feeding that fire was all I could think to do.
I opened this letter in the corner of my dark kitchen in the late hours of the night. Though the others had been dismissed, I knew within the depths of my soul that this one had to be pursued. It came not from the desire to spend late nights in Paris with new French friends, but from a power I had yet to recognize, leading me to what becomes a miracle.
As I perused the travel websites and caught sight of a bit of what could be my own experiences, I was filled with something so sweet and wonderful that tears filled my wishful eyes. The history and culture of these places pulled me to feel and think differently. There was only one question:
How could I possibly pay for this?
Of course my parents had another question on their minds, one that boggled my inexperienced mind until I was actually on another continent without them. It was less of a question, though, and more of a reinforced cement barricade of the fear of having their baby be separated by an entire ocean. This was also something I had not anticipated.
Over the next few months, I worked tirelessly to convince my parents that this was something that was safe, beneficial, and financially possible. I made presentations, handouts, pamphlets. I requested more information, I researched the places I would be visiting.
They weren't convinced.
They did, however offer an option I hadn't considered. What if I visited our very good friends who had recently temporarily relocated to England. This turned into an incredibly wonderful opportunity. Not only was I able to spend time with amazing people I had sorely missed, I was able to jump into global travel in a more comfortable environment for both my parents and me.
This trip changed me.
I looked at my own country differently. Experiencing another nation firsthand, no matter how wonderful, instills a new, unexplainable sense of patriotism that I believe every American should experience. Additionally, I was able to discuss American, British, and world politics with a Brit. How many people are able to experience that? This was truly memorable and offered a new perspective that I had not yet been able to hear.
I also looked at the world differently. Before, I will admit that New Jersey seemed to be the only place that really mattered. Of course I understood that events in other places affected my beautiful state, but that's really all it was; they affected us. It had previously seemed that the entire world lived and worked and breathed just to affect New Jersey. Though I had traveled very far before, experiencing an entirely new nation, independent and different, was what took me out of myself enough to see everything more clearly. Because that is what travel does: it forces you out of yourself so that everything you know, everything you are used to, is finally clear.
A couple of months before embarking on this incredible trip, though, I received a call. She asked if she was speaking to my mother, then, after I replied that she wasn't, asked if this was me. "Yes," I replied, slightly confused at why this professional-sounding lady was calling me.
"You won the Holly's Holiday Giveaway contest. Now, if you could just tell me what trip you wanted to go on, we can get you enrolled right away; there isn't much space right now." That was a contest I entered in secret. Worth $7,000, I was sure that if I won, my parents would let me go. After a few miracles, I was granted the scholarship for use on a 2014 trip and permission from my parents to set out to Europe with a bunch of other students as a Student Ambassador.
Before I became interested in traveling the world, I was not even that interested in the rest of the world. I hated learning about world history in school. Why learn about the rest of the world when we could be learning about America? That all changed, and this year I study my world history textbook for hours just for fun and watch documentaries about 17th century London and Louis XVI-- just because I want to.
I never thought that a letter I pulled out of the trash could change me so profoundly.
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