Living the Quarantine with the S

If there is one thing I miss during Covid, it is traveling. I love traveling. Before Covid, my husband and I were doing at least 2-3 international trips a year. And at the height of my career in international business development, I could be in 4 continents within 2 weeks. And even then, I was never tired of it, still opting for more travel during vacation. Travel was a big part of my life – it gave me fun, the variety I craved for, the “looking forward to” even when I was not traveling.

But it was not always this way. My first “travel” experience, if you could ever call it that, was riding on the plane for 15 minutes from Hangzhou to Shanghai when I was twelve. It was thrilling, as my memories rewrite that episode, as they frequently do, but if I am to be completely honest, what I felt back then was probably more anxiety at the beginning of the ride and then a sense of disappointment over just how short it was when the big fuss was over. My first international travel did not happen until I came to the US for graduate studies – a trip that literally changed my life forever. I remember being picked up in LAX and driven to Manhattan Beach where my professors lived, my head turning left and right, taking in the quaint little seaside cottages so fantastical that they came straight out of the movies. It was magical!

As a poor graduate student, I could not afford the luxury of travel. I had a stipend of roughly $1,000 a month, more than half of which would go to housing. I had to buy food, clothes, books and everything else with the rest of it. Without a kitchen in my dorm, I opted for one of the cafeteria plans that was all-you-can-eat, for dinner. I would completely stuff myself during dinner to reserve enough energy for the entire next day. I gained 20 pounds within a month.

As soon as my cousin was able to wire the $5,000 (my parents’ entire lifesaving) to me, I moved out of the college dorm and got myself a car. Riding in the car gave me a taste of freedom that I never had before. And it was cheap freedom – a gallon of gasoline back then only cost $0.99. So every chance I got, I would do road trips with other graduate students, soaking in that newly found freedom.

It wasn’t until 2004 that my husband and I had our first international trip to Italy. We were inexperienced and timid travelers back then – intimidated by a foreign language, unfamiliar customs and transportation systems, we went with a tour group, taking scheduled stops at the all-too-cliched landmarks to take the all-too-cliched trophy pictures and buy the all-too-cliched souvenirs (pretty much all of them made in China). Overtime, we would get bolder and more sophisticated, seeking out less well-known routes, picking local activities instead of simply going to touristy spots, and staying in Airbnb rather than American hotels despite the familiarity and comfort they afford. But back then, we did not know any of that travel-like-a-local philosophy. We were simple folks who saved every paycheck in order to travel and we wanted to make sure we got our money’s worth by not missing out any item on the must-do list. And we did – we had so much fun we were determined to travel every year.

We went through many phases of travel. There was a period we could not get enough of museums. Then I was enamored by churches. Then palaces caught my fancy. And then it was about ancient civilizations and history. At some point, we switched from cultural sites to natural sceneries, awed by the majesty of nature that no human feat can rival. I learned how to swim and then every winter we had to go to a tropical island to snorkel. After watching Anthony Bourdain, we went on food pilgrimages to Japan and the Basque Country. Travel allowed us to learn and grow, and as we grew, our travel experiences grew with us -- having sampled the endless beauties, human ingenuities, and rich histories has made us hunger for more and more…

Travel opened my eyes and made me realize many of the stereotypes like “macho, exotic Arabic princes” are Hollywood fabrications – Many Arabic men are actually small in build and quite genteel. Travel made me see America from the eyes of other countries – right after the 2016 election, my cab driver in Sydney told me he felt sorry for me as an American. Travel taught me the most memorable experiences in life are those you did not plan for, you suffered through, but then somehow you had the most fun recalling – one of the stories I like to tell at parties is how my husband and I arrived in London only to find out our hotel mistakenly “overbooked” us. It turned out there was a famous soccer game that night and all hotels in London were fully booked. After many frustrating and expensive phone calls, we finally found one youth hostel in Greenwich village that was willing to take us in. Dragging our luggage through subways and train stations while fighting jetlag, we finally arrived in a dilapidated building where we were greeted by a scary looking man with tattoos all over his body and such heavy accent that we could hardly decipher what he was saying. He was very kind to us, though, giving us a room with 4 bunk beds all to ourselves. Why that remains one of my fondest memories of London remains a mystery, but I love these chance encounter stories, even when there is not always a big revelation at the end, because that is just life. The more I savor these random encounters, the more I feel I’m living life the way it is meant to be lived.

Travel humbled me, made me aware of just how little I know. Travel forced me to confront my limitations, sometimes overcoming them (learning to swim so I could dive into the depth of the ocean), sometimes learning to accept them (crossing Machu Picchu off my list at least temporarily because having suffered through 2 episodes of high altitude sickness, I’m in no hurry to replicate them). Travel made me appreciate my home, where I live, who I am and the journey I made so far. Travel gave meaning to my life.

So I was distraught when Covid hit and we were locked down. I was bored and restless. I longed for traveling, the fresh experiences it brought me, the curiosity it satisfied, and the human connections I made. I even started to miss the terrible smell of airplane food. But gradually I adjusted. It’s a skillset I learned as an avid traveler -- the ability to adapt, whether it’s time differences or driving on the left vs. right, or shaking one’s head means yes instead of no. A traveler has to be flexible in order to survive in a strange environment. A traveler has to embrace the foreignness, the seeming absurdity, and the unknown. A traveler has to surrender, and yet still have faith that he or she is going to be ok and even have fun. And once you let go of that stubborn pre-conception, you will see the only thing that stands between you and fun is yourself.

And that’s what I did, without realizing it, until I recently watched Rick Steves talk about how he was dealing with the quarantine with the mindset of a traveler. The mindset of a traveler is a sense of curiosity, wonder of the world, and a desire to learn. While riding a hot balloon over Cappadocia is absolutely exhilarating, reading about the intersection between Christianity and Muslim can be enchanting as well. For human connections, I turned to Podcasts. Interviews with people, even the most ordinary ones, reveal each one of us is extraordinary in some way. And I discovered the power of food – I’ve always enjoyed food, but never the making of it. But now I find myself rummaging through YouTube to find the next culinary challenge I want to conquer. After a particularly satisfying meal, my son even voluntarily shared his podcast (which he refused to share for months). I’ve always aspired to be a mom who offers more than cooking and taking care of household chores, but maybe the deepest connection between a mom and a son is as simple as a well-cooked meal. I’m glad it’s not too late for me to learn that.

So I have surrendered myself to this quarantine experience with the spirit of a traveler, and what I found is I’m not feeling confined at all. Rather, I feel like an 18-year-old starting college again. This time not studying courses that are imposed on me, but exploring wherever my interests take me. I’m tickled, dazzled, salivating, eager to take on the new adventure.

Buckle up!