From May to November 2019, I traveled full-time. After graduating from Georgetown University, I packed up everything I owned, put it in a storage unit, and fly from DC to San Francisco to Auckland. It was the start of a grand travel adventure, and outside of studying abroad, I had no idea what to expect. The result? Overwhelming gratitude. By the time I returned to the United States for Thanksgiving in November, I was so thankful for so many different things. Here are 19 of those things that I jotted down throughout the course of my journey. 1. I'm thankful for the feeling of never being at home because there is something so raw and humbling about wandering somewhere new while your heart remains with those you love. 2. I'm thankful for the women of different races, religions, ethnicities, and cultures all over the world who continually go out of their way to make the world safer, easier, and more accessible for each other. 3. I'm thankful for the moments when I began to notice that I was in spaces where no one else looked like me and the realization that it was likely only a taste of what minorities experienced throughout my education. 4. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share a table with Israelis, Egyptians, Canadians, Dutch, Germans, Aussies, Pakistanis, Brits, and Spaniards in countries that none of us called home. 5. I'm thankful for the strangers who translated for me at food stalls, restaurants, convenience stores, metro stations, or even more unconventional and inconvenient places, especially the ones who were never asked to do so. 6. I'm thankful for the friendships that have endured dozens of time zone shifts. For the text messages that said, “When can you talk?” or “Hey! How has [country] been?” or “I’ll be around at this time if you can chat!” For those that know that the best way to reach me is sometimes just to FaceTime Audio, and I’ll pick up if at all possible. 7. I'm thankful for the renewed ability to see past the media and the Internet. Though information is often helpful in travel, too much information takes away from the ability to form independent opinions about a place and its people. I am constantly searching for new ways to learn how to think in my travel experiences and not what to think. If I believed everything I read in my travel planning, I would simply never go anywhere. 8. I'm thankful for the times when I started a movie on Netflix and then flew out of “range” of finishing it. Never have I felt so lucky to be disappointed and inconvenienced. 9. I'm thankful for rain when I have everything I currently own with me. It’s a heavy reminder that having warm, dry clothes isn’t a daily concern and that it’s mighty uncomfortable when it becomes one. 10. I'm thankful for the friends and family who flew out to join me on adventures far from home. It takes time, effort, and money to share in these experiences, but it has also created some of my most treasured memories. 11. I'm thankful for the blisters from my shoes because it meant I spent the majority of my day walking, not sitting. 12. I'm thankful for the desire for increasingly fewer material possessions and increasingly more memories and experiences. 13. I'm thankful for the friends (and soon family) who have welcomed me back home with couches to crash on, beds to rest in, and tables with home-cooked meals to eat at. Familiar faces and places are some of the best ways to recover from extended travel. 14. I'm thankful for the local guides who took a place and made it colorful with context. Often, they were showing me their home and giving me a window into their world. 15. I'm thankful for the immigration officers in each and every country I visited, especially for the one in Timor-Leste. They are the very first and last touchpoints of a place. In Dili, he stopped to ask me, “Is this your first time in Timor-Leste?” And when I answered, “Yes! First time,” he paused from stamping my passport, looked at me directly, and said genuinely, “Welcome to Timor-Leste.” As if to say, “Welcome to my country. We’re so glad you are here.” It is sometimes the smallest moments that make travel so significant. 16. I'm thankful for my parents who not only invested in me and an education that has enabled me to provide for myself from anywhere in the world but who also gave me practical experience and skills to navigate new situations. I love you, I miss you, and I’ll see you soon. 17. I'm thankful for the ability to constantly question, whether it’s government practices, other travelers in conversation, or even respected travel bodies like UNESCO and Michelin. It became a reminder that even what is established isn’t infallible. Constantly questioning whether the diversity of thought is present is necessary. 18. I'm thankful for freedom of movement. Nothing made me realize this more than a casual discussion with a citizen of Israel who could easily list off the coun
