My college recently had an event called the "Written/Spoken Series," where local published writers and poets come to campus to read their work, sell and sign books, and talk to students. One particular piece by Stephen Ramey, author of a short story collection entitled "Glass Animals," was about a depressed white man in a coffee shop talking to a girl working there who was of mixed race. Their interaction and compare and contrast of differences made me think of how much we encounter the same thing while traveling.
Traveling offers us a rainbow of different people to meet, with different backgrounds, looks, and ways of talking. So many of my favorite and memorable exchanges while traveling have been with strangers from foreign lands. Not only are conversations interesting and out of the ordinary, but I pretty much always walk away having learned something, with a new perspective on the world.
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