Some of my travel experiences feel like fever dreams. When I studied abroad in Barcelona, my program brought us to Mallorca for a weekend, and I was sick the whole time so my memories of that trip are particularly hazy. I picked and ate a fig straight from a tree in a stranger’s yard, and it was fresh and delicious, like nothing I’d ever tasted before. I drifted in and out of sleep on a scenic train ride, and I swam in the Mediterranean Sea in the dark, and there was a castle, and my friend got to practice her medical Spanish vocabulary by explaining my symptoms to a pharmacist.…
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Compost Burritos and Other Stories I Tell About Hawai’i
A friend and I were talking last night about feeling settled in Boston. We appreciate the lives and communities we’ve built here but we still feel the pull of distant places. “I didn’t mean to get so comfortable here,” I lamented. We laughed at ourselves for wanting more when we’ve had so much already — she’s lived abroad in Mexico and Mozambique, and I spent more than three months backpacking Europe before moving to Hawai’i to work on a farm. It’s always amusing to tell stories about living on Maui to friends I’ve met since the experience. People are surprised when I tell them I lived in Hawai’i for a…
