“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” -Cesare Pavese
I can identify with this statement completely. If I were to rewind my life back about three months, I never would have said that I could connect with the words of his quote. Until I studied abroad, I didn’t fully grasp this idea. I’d traveled some before, but mostly in my own country, and I’d certainly never lived in a foreign country by myself for four months.
Living abroad is a dream. It is. So many people want it, but I would say that only a small percentage of them achieve it. I am more than grateful for this absolutely life-changing experience I am having here in Ecuador. Every facet of my being has been touched by the past two months I’ve lived here. This traveling is shaping me, remaking me. I’ve definitely been forced time and time again to trust strangers. I’ve been forced every day to forget the comforts of home and to live off balance in this new world I’m in. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but it is unmistakeably different than the life I led before Ecuador. I think the brutality of it is actually the beauty of it. It makes you go take a chance. It makes you learn in ways that you never would have another way. It begins making you, you.
