Conversations while traveling

Traveling is all about experiencing first hand, being in other cultures and learning, but seeing the sights and eating the local food is only a part of it. Talking to people we meet when traveling is even cooler as far as I am concerned. One conversation I had was with a young man from Afghanistan who is planning on going home soon to visit his family. He said there is a war going on there, as if I wasn't aware, but he believes he will be safe. He said the problem is not with the people of Afghanistan, that they really just want to live out their lives undisturbed. Isn't that the way it always is? And on the trolley a tall, pleasantly serious American woman who overheard our conversation spoke with us and offered advice on where to stop. As it turned out, she was on the 1984 USA Olympic volleyball team, is now married to a German man, and has lived in a small town near Munich for twenty years. Sitting next to me on the flight home was an anxious woman from Serbia who had come to NC, compliments of a church, as a refugee in 1991 during the war there. She had gone home to visit her family and was returning to her American life.

Maybe it just feeds my love of hearing people's life stories.