When you step into a new and different place there is an opportunity to look back and examine the world you just left—the one that molded and shaped you into who you are today. Except now upon leaving the country I once thought was home, it too now also seems foreign. I’m forced to adopt the identity of an alien while also accepting responsibility for the crimes committed by my nation and culture. This discord created further distance between myself and my home—a dissonance that may never resolve, not even after ending my journey and returning.

And that’s how this feeling begins. It’s a dislocation or homesickness that won’t be remedied by going back to where you were, but rather is only stabilized after being alone and finding yourself connected to more than just people and places.

So being foreign for the first time begins to manifest itself on many levels from the concrete to the abstract. These experiences are often felt simultaneously, such as recognizing the rhetorical significance of small talk, table manners, and other forms of phatic communication, studying the semiotics of international symbols while on the subway, or succumbing to the sensation of the train’s gentle swaying and suddenly sleeping soundly. This sheer volume of new experiences can create dreams that may either delight or deceive you. And although your nightmares can’t always be contained in a cat nap, when you do wake you’ll be better prepared for the next misunderstanding. To get by, one must remember to find the familiarity in the foreign and connect cultures through the sharing of stories.

All of these things are bound to happen while analyzing the differences in culture through language, syntax, and dialect, but simply by listening to the language you can realize the values and traditions that shaped society. Eventually, you can then see the beginnings of our own Western world and understand how we got to where we are today—for better and for worse—and realize why this feeling of estrangement is important and necessary for personal growth. The big question then is who will I become as a result of these experiences?

Maybe I will find new hope and patience with the processes of progress by forgiving frustration, abandoning bias, and instead opening my eyes, mind and heart to enlightenment as experienced by everyone—as an individual and as a people. Or maybe there is no definitive answer, but instead the decision to keep traveling.

Elizabeth Drew once said that “too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” And while I can offer few solutions to the world’s problems I still think I have something to say, even if it only amounts to a video, photos, and an essay. One thing I do know is that it will never be enough, and so I must keep on rambling, “wandering [to reestablish] the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe (Anatole France).”