One Place
I was born and raised in Kathmandu, the capital of a gorgeous country Nepal. I came to the United States in 2002 seeking a better higher education than what Nepal had to offer. To be fair, “better” is a relative term. I have always learned better through discussions and actually seeing applications of the material being taught and that was one of the reasons I decided to attend a school in the United States.
The only travel that I have done since moving to the US has been my trip to Tokyo for a research project back in 2004. To be honest, when I first came to the US, I did not have aspirations of traveling at all. When I got to meet students from different parts of the world and share stories, that was when I felt that I have not seen enough of the world. One of the lessons from my experience being in the states is that interacting with people who come from different background really opens your eyes to new things and see the world in a different way. Derek Sivers talks about this in his latest post and how that’s a motivating factor for him.
“How would you feel about living in the rest of the world for the rest of your life?” Just thinking about it makes me excited. I’m similar to Derek in that I need to be “immersed in local friends, language, culture, and daily life - until I really understand that point of view - until it feels like home.” The part that scares me a little bit is to then “move to another opposite part of the world and do it again, until there are no more opposites left.” I guess I feel that way because I just had to say goodbye to a bunch of friends who had been an important part of the last four years of my life and move to a new city and try and find my place.
With that said, the idea of having lived at a wide range of places & called it home sounds just like the kind of goal to aspire to. I’m not there yet in terms of where I am with my career & I don’t have the right kind of citizenship to make that process any easier (I guess these are just excuses) but it is definitely something that I want to work towards. I don’t know about you guys but being a true Global Citizen is kickass!