When I first started travelling the world at 20 years old, I found comfort in meeting people that spoke English.
Although everything else was foreign, there was a familiarity in being able to connect in a common language.
However, the more I travelled the more I longed for the unknown. So, I’d eat more local food, go to more remote places, and immerse myself in foreign cultures and languages.
I’m from the UK originally but I don’t come home all that often. So, when I do, I eat food from my childhood, I meet up with old friends, I listen to local musicians I haven’t heard in a long time, and I drink way too much tea.
I also dig through all my old travel memories that are stored in a little brown chest in my mum’s house.
Yesterday I took that box down, dusted it off, and started flicking through lots of handwritten notes and old photographs. Among the pile of memories was a piece of paper that had seven foreign words on it. Next to each word was a description of its meaning.