Vacation With A Purpose

Life has certainly been interesting this past year. As many of you know, I’ve made some big changes recently and I’m currently forging a new life path on my own. I am slowly finding my footing and I am anxious for what this next chapter in life will mean for me. Part of this new journey is about challenging and exposing myself to new adventures where I can learn and grow from others. Traveling has always been my preferred choice for just such things and has already played an enormous part of my growth throughout the years. When faced with two weeks of vacation that I typically take off around Christmas to travel, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do for my first big solo event. Somehow the thought of traveling just for the sake of travel sounded empty and while a break from life was needed, I didn’t exactly feel like celebrating with the usual holiday. I wanted to do something productive and completely out of my comfort zone.

While researching travel destinations that fit this criteria, I decided to look into global volunteer opportunities. A close friend of mine had done two tours of building homes with Habitat for Humanity during law school and inspired me to check out this organization. As luck would have it, the only Habitat for Humanity volunteer opportunity offered during the holiday season was with their Global Village program in China!

To be honest, China wasn’t high on my list of places to visit next. Not sure why, but I think the size of the country is intimidating in the same manner that India and Africa are and it certainly wasn’t a place I ever envisioned traveling to on my own.  Figuring I had nothing to lose, I applied and interviewed for a volunteer position building a house in the Guangdong Providence in Southern China. When I received the acceptance letter a few days later, I knew I had picked the correct path. Everything about this decision just felt right.

Here are some details of the China build:

Being a Tourist in My Own Backyard

I have a confession to make. I have lived in San Diego for eight years and this past weekend was my first visit to one of the city’s fine museums. To make matters worse, I live two blocks from the heart of Balboa Park, which houses 15 museums alone, and I walk past each one of them several times a week when I am out on a ramble. Disgraceful.

I love museums and will often visit cities near and far just for the chance to explore various collections. When I first moved to San Diego, I enthusiastically toured the delights of the city. But the emphasis was largely on the natural beauty of the beaches, coastal life, and enjoying the glorious year-round weather. For some reason, the museums went untouched and unnoticed. As the years went by and I settled into a routine, exploring new places in my adopted hometown became less of a priority. I took the city’s culture offerings for granted knowing I could visit at a moment’s notice. Yet, I never did.

The Toulouse-Lautrec's Paris: Selections from the Baldwin M. Baldwin Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art is what finally got me out of the house and pushed me to do something cultural in my own backyard.

The collection showcased over a 100 works of art that haven’t been shown together in more than 20 years. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) is a French Post-Impressionist artist who is probably best known for his lithography posters; in particular posters depicting the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. He was a fixture in the bars and cabarets in Montmarte and his sketches of the patrons often became focal points in his artwork.

Mastering the Art of Solo Travel

There is nothing I like more than to be on my own in a big city. Being solo in a big city means the possibility of being anonymous and going entirely unnoticed since you are one among many as the locals go about their day. I love feeling invisible as I slink in and out of museums, cafes, pubs, and shops along my journey. The freedom empowers me and there is a decadent delicious excitement when faced with the prospect of having no one’s agenda for the day, but my own.

Up until very recently all of my solo travel has existed in big cities. I tend to explore less of the tourist areas and concentrate on the heart of the city itself. I like to imagine what it would be like to live in different North American and European cities as I get coffee alongside the locals during their morning commute, encounter them on their lunch breaks, and frequent the same places where they celebrate the end of their workday. I am a voyeur at heart and can spend hours observing people and their interactions and watching life unfold around me. The buzz of the city creates an energy which stimulates and inspires me creatively.