"Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

-- Anthony Bourdain

I've always enjoyed traveling (I mean, who doesn't enjoy a nice vacation?), and I've never really felt bound to any one specific place, either; I moved houses quite a few times as a kid, and eventually went from California to Tennessee. But it wasn't until years later that I discovered my desire to travel the world.

It was my junior year of high school, and I decided that I was going to go on my church's annual mission trip to El Salvador. I'm still not quite sure what inspired me so much to go that year. I'd known people that had gone on the trip, and I heard how amazing it was, but it had never occurred to me that I should go until that year. After I had thought about it, though, I knew that I had to go and that it had to be that year. There was a point after I had signed up that I thought I wouldn't be able to save enough money to go, and that was the moment I realized how badly I wanted to. Somehow I managed to save up enough money with a great deal of help from my family, and I went on a week-long medical mission trip in Perulapan, El Salvador with my best friend and quite a few other kids from the youth group. It was this trip that inspired me.

Living in a new culture, even for just a week, is so extremely eye-opening. The conditions that we stayed in were not comfortable, but they were no where near the same as what the people of the area lived in. I was a witness to a people that worked for every bit that they could get. I saw children that lived with such a joy and happiness in their eyes, even when they were lacking in necessities. I learned that less is so much more, and nothing can surpass watching the people that we had spoken to while door-knocking give their lives to Christ.

I returned home with a new perspective. I didn't enjoy the excess of everything I saw when I got home. I realized that life was more than things.

This is why I want to travel the world.

It's not because of the things I could buy or the pictures I could take. It's not because I want to stop by all the tourist locations and be able to say, "I've been there" or, "I've seen that." It's because of the experiences and the people and the cultures. I've seen a piece of the world, and I want to see the rest of it. The world works in so many different ways, and I can't live my life being isolated from it all. I've been exposed to my wanderlust nature. I want to explore and have adventures and meet new people. I want to live a full life, deep and rich and wide across the seas, and hopefully, I can leave something good behind along the way.