I want to tell you about a feeling. One of my absolutely favorite feelings. One I think you'll recognize if you've ever stepped outside in a city that wasn't yours.
Here's how I describe it.
You arrive on your vacation and walk out of the hotel and the sky somehow looks different here. I don't know how to explain that, except that it does.
The ambulance sirens scream a different tune.
The rumble of an entirely different language becomes the background of your whole day.
Women walk at a different clip.
Young gaggles of children weave through hurried streets full of business suits and tourists on their way to school, completely unbothered.
There's a smell in the air you can't quite name yet, but by day three it will be the thing that identifies this country every time you close your eyes and think of it.
The normality of an entirely different culture is a complete mystery to me. And I love spending a whole week slowly uncovering it.
That's the feeling. Freedom? Adventure? Newness? An enormous, slightly overwhelming "WOW — I had no idea." Yes, that's the one. It takes my breath away.
💡 It's easy to forget, inside our four walls and our routines, that there are thousands of cultures doing it entirely differently. Different ways of saying hello. Different ways of eating lunch — slowly, with wine, at 2pm on a Tuesday — happens to be my favorite. 🤩
My favorite feeling last October on our Abroad on Paris trip was watching the Parisians dance on the bank of the Seine in the evening.
There's no ticket. No schedule. It's a Monday at 7:34. This is just what happens on a Monday evening by the river when the weather is right.
I stand there every time and feel just a little undone by it. 🌉
Go find her. 🥐 By her, I mean you! 😁
