VAGABONDING AS A LIFESTYLE
South Korean Adventure
Camille has brought me to this place, never on my travel wish list, through her anti-sabbatical activity of teaching English. It has expanded my world in two ways, by experiencing a new world culture and also a vagabonding sub culture. There is a whole community of foreign young adults here for limited periods of time for the experience and to fund their next personally meaningful adventure. Daring and intensely unique individuals all with their own path but forming a close knit community structure within.
It conjures up past wonder lust from my very core. They are doing what I dreamt of at their age but was not courageous enough to cross the then social barrier that young women did not venture too far from home or even leave until married. The few who did had to literally blaze their own trail many times alone and overcome huge obstacles and ridicule without any support with few if any accepted opportunities to do so. My chosen easier alternative was to get a high paying job I hated at home to fund my world travels with earned vacation time. Unfortunate circumstances literally shoved me into my first move when after a divorce as a single mom, I moved us to Indianapolis in search of a new life and a better education for Camille. It was hard but we both grew and flourished but not without the help of our many new but now lifelong friends. Next chapter was when she went to work in Africa for a gap year before college and I moved to Hawaii where my life changed immensely for the better and I married again on a sandbar in the ocean. Together Doug and I recently seized the opportunity to live in New Zealand for 5 years with his employment. What our future brings, who knows but it will undoubtedly be more expansive traveling and vagabonding.
Looking back on all of this, it occurs to me that I have, over a very long time, intermittingly pursued the world in a way that these individuals have greatly surpassed in their few short adult years. They are teaching me so much and their limitless valor is hopefully rubbing off on me. I feel grateful and blessed to be here.
