Travel.

            Although this is an activity that I have an innate respect, passion, and curiosity for, I have of late (and by late, I mean for the past…six or so years) experienced very few of these types of adventures, or potential ones. With family I have traveled from Madison, Wisconsin, the place of my birth, to Washington D.C., to Carbondale, Illinois, to Melbourne, Australia, and back to Carbondale, Illinois. Family trips have consisted of the prescribed Christmas vacations to grandparents’ houses in either Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Canada; and of course, the ever-popular family/honeymooning getaway to the islands of Hawaii for a couple weeks when I was 12, angry, spoiled, and embarrassed by my family’s presence. Yes. Typical.

            It seems that at some point when I started high school, my family hit a period of apathetic and lackadaisical dark ages, and we did…nothing. It’s true that my self-proclaimed excessive (hint: EXPENSIVE) passion for horseback riding might have made traveling on the whole somewhat uneconomical while I was in high school for the whole family; especially for my dad, a rather penurious guy for the majority of my childhood (dude used to take a calculator to the grocery store so that my family would not go over the $60 weekly budget of groceries which he had planned out…for a family of 4. Note: this is only $15 more than the average budget a person on food stamps gets to use per week).  But I think that he is slowly rousing from his penny-pinching slumber, and I hope that I can say that a revolution for himself, my mom, and younger brother is on the horizon.

            As for myself, that horizon is already beginning to light up. This is my senior year of college; I will graduate this year in May; and my one definitive plan for my future:

            GET OUT

…of the United States. Maybe I don’t mean this specifically about the United States (I don’t feel like I am running away from the responsibilities after graduation that would loom over me if I stayed in the U.S.), but maybe I mean mostly Illinois. Illinois has become…illinoying. I’ve been cooped up within these state lines for too long. I feel like by simply existing here for so long with nary a breath of un-illinoid air my asphyxiated lungs need something new, fresh, springy, different. Which is why (of course) I plan on sustaining myself in the benevolent land of South Korea, surviving the wilds of the currently very popular trend of Teaching English as a Second Language. Or as a Foreign Language. Or as a Second Dialect. Or as whatever mnemonic breakdown you subscribe to (there are over nine of them listed on wikipedia). But, as I have found out, you can do this in the United States, especially in places like Native American reservations or large cities where immigration is constantly in flux. But what I also take into consideration is that, since I have a surplus of “American” experiences, and whether they are Illinois-biased or not, and if I am going to quit what I am used to for at least a year, I might as well quit cold turkey. (Plus, South Korean programs tend to pay for one’s rent and round-trip ticket if certain conditions apply to you. It’s an adventure…and an economical one at that. Thanks, Dad!) My mentality at this point is that I have somehow found myself with a dirge of adventures on my hands; I am ready to flex my glob-trotting muscles by traversing as far away as possible. 

But maybe I am speaking too rashly. 

Taken altogether, my foreseen adventures are a long way off, and I know virtually nothing about South Korea proper. And while I plan on reading up on the history and current situation of this place which I have such a paltry knowledge of, it seems that this is a story for another day, many months from now.

First of all, I don’t even know how to properly experience travel with the intent of learning something from it. When I traveled to Hawaii I was much younger and angsty; when in Australia I was either five or nine (when we lived there for a summer), even younger than I was in Hawaii, and a thread of a narrative would be contrived and piecemeal; trips to grandparents’ houses simply seem uneventful and all tend to blend together in their innocuous and homey grasp on my mind.

Second of all, what is really so bad, boring, hackneyed, or insipid about where I am at right now?, right here in the dead-center of Illinois? Could it just be that I have displaced my ennui for a certain life-style on the state as a whole? Have I been rather unfair this whole time in my contempt for Illinois?

Maybe.

In fact, yes, I think I have. Which is why I need to give this place another, maybe even last, chance. So I will travel here and now. I’ll travel my current whereabouts, learn from them, write about them, reflect upon them, and teach myself how to not take a place as a whole for granted. Not only will I learn about central Illinois places and spaces, but hopefully I will also learn about the entire meaning of travel writing and narratives from a personal point of view BEFORE I set off into the wilds of the world. These experiences now have great potential to benefit my whole life as a writer, traveler, and human being by simply, or not so simply, raising my consciousness to a new level of awareness.

So where do I possibly go from here?      

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