Most of the places I've been I was at before I was a teenager. I am passed even the teeanager years now and I often wish that I would remember more of what I saw when I was a child. I often kicked myself for not remembering those experiences better. Now I look back and realize that while it might partly be my nature to just take things in stride, I also had a bit of a brain overload. It was just normal to me to be touring yet another country or city so I didn't care that I slept thru most of our 2 hour double decker bus ride thru London. Now I wonder how in the world I could have been so bored and uninterested. This was LONDON! And I could have told people I saw Big Ben or maybe even Buckingham Palace from the upper deck of a bus but all I can tell people is that I slept in the back of the bus most of our tour through London. Actually if it was indeed Buckingham Palace (some of my family members seem to be as forgetful as I am) then I can boast that I have seen it. I remember a glance of it, but my memory fails when I try to put that picture into words.
That isn't how it always was tho. I'm not sure if I should comment on all the places I've been or how I should narrow it down because I have been to a lot more places (slightly exotic ones at that) then most of my friends have been.
When I was 4, my parents moved us to Malawi, Afrika for a few years. I don't remember much about Malawi that was outstanding to me, it was just normal life. It was normal life to live in a walled compound with a guard, normal life to have darker skinned friends whom I didn't nearly always understand, normal life to walk into town right into the loud, bustling market with no street visible, heaps of clothes and stacks of fruits and vegetables and all manner of other goods spread out beside tiny shops built out of any material that was at hand. Witnessing poverty was also normal to me, so much so that I don't remember much of that. I never had to worry about where my food was coming from and I didn't have the mind at the time to think of what my friends were going thru. I do remember people begging for money because they hadn't eaten for a week or since Thursday. I remember going with my family to food distributions and seeing the long line ups of people waiting all day in the sun for the month or so worth of food that we had to offer them. It was during these years spent in The Warm Heart of Africa that we traveled to Zimbabwe and got the chance to ride those big beasts called elephants. In my mind we waited for a long time and finally we climbed onto a big platform and mounted the waiting beast in groups of 3 or 4. In Zim we also visited Victoria Falls which are considered to be among the largest in the world. Another time, we drove for a few days without air conditioning and spent a few hours of our vacation swimming in the surf of the Indian Ocean off the shore of Mozambique. Snorkling off an island in Lake Malawi with schools of colorful fish nibbling at our toes is yet another thing I can boast of.
On our way home from Malawi the first time we were there, we toured our way home through Europe. We took in the sights of Paris (France), Rome (Italy), and Amsterdam (Netherlands). Here again I wish I could say I remembered more but as a 7 year old who divided her life almost in half between two continents, I didn't really care about seeing another one. Of course the memory of the Eiffle Tower has stuck in my mind, those being super monumental moments in my life, although I cannot tell you my impressions of the structure as I don't remember them enough to form them into words. I also remember viewing the famous Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre Museum in Paris and I seem to remember thinking that this was something I could boast of to my friends for years to come. I cannot tell you anything about Rome as I cannot specifically recall anything of the city. I have a few random memories of random street corners or fountains but I cannot go back in time and tell my 7-year-old self to remember more of the situation or even what city or country it was in. After our stay in Paris (I imagine it was just a few short days) we boarded a train and rode thru Belgium into Netherlands. Here we toured some sort of tulip greenhouse and bought wooden shoes from a small (tourist) shop. I wonder if we took our leave at that point and made for home. Having toured Europe, our next trip home from Africa about 3 years later had to top it. Our first stop was Egypt. By now I was just days away from turning 11 and I knew how to appreciate my life better. Still not to the extent I wish now that I had but I remember more details of this trip. (I did still have to ask my sister and mom where we went first, but I do have more details stored away in my memory) We spend our afternoons lying on our beds, trying to beat the heat in our 19th floor rooms. Mornings and evenings were spent eating exotic foods and touring around with our personal driver, Achmed. It seems to me that Hummers seemed to abound in Cairo and Achmed tried to tell us some sort of joke about camels and Hummers. Something to the effect of hamir (sp???????) meaning camel in his language and some form of the word camel meant Hummer. Maybe I've got that all mixed up in my head but to this day I can recall that he told us that hamir meant camel and often think of that when I see an actual Hummer. There was a bit of significance there because at one point in our stay we boarded our respecive animals and rode in style to see the massive Pyramids of Giza. Some of these beasts were your typical horses, but at lest two of them were camels. And we all got our turn to climb up on the humped beast and hold on tight as they lurched to standing positions from their awkward kneeling poses. I don't remember getting very close to the pyramids we rode to, but I know we were not supposed to touch these ancient, magnificent tombs which might be the reason we didn't get too close to them. I do remember they were huge and I was in awe of them. After our beast were returned, we also walked around to visit the Sphinx which is a great stone creature with an animal body and a human head. One other highlight of visiting Egypt was our midnight trip to the market. At high noon in Cairo it is much too warm to be out shopping, so much of life is lived at other hours of the day, and even night. It was sort of exhilarating mixing with the throngs of people, sitting at an antique table drinking tea delicately poured out of a china pitcher into our china cups, at midnight. From Egypt we went on to Israel. Here again we visited markets, but the part I remember best was the Dead Sea. First we took a bus to the ruins of Masada, and from there we took the bus to the Dead Sea. It was hot so the sand felt like it burned not only the skin of your feet but into the bone as well. And the sea itself, well at that point I wasn't very fond of water and I couldn't swim, much less float. But there I could float without even trying. The only problem was that as soon as there was a bit of splashing and the water got in your eyes it stung like crazy from all that salt and you would have to stumble blindly to the washing station that had a bunch of sinks to wash out the salt so you could go back in and do it all over again.
My stories about other continents have run out and I'm reduced to writing about my own continent. I am very thankful that I have been able to see and live around different lifestyles and cultures but North America will always be my home home. In all our travelling accross many waters, we have not done much traveling in our own country, or the United States. I have traveled through perhaps about 15 states (that is a guess) and even lived in New Mexico for a few months (a major highlight if my life as you all know). I have visited the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park (namely Old Faithful, the geyser) and Niagra Falls. I spent a week in the beautiful state of Oregon and went to the coast for a day while I was there. That was the first and so far only time I have been to the coast in North America. The only other body of water I can boast of swimming in is Lake Erie. That's actually the last monumental place I can think of to boast about.
I have spent quite awhile on this post, a lot of that time I should have spent sleeping. So now again I will post this as it is. Mistakes and not making sense and all.