Lessons from traveling abroad: how do you know when you're in danger?

My first full day in Paris I spent the morning on a tour and the evening watching the Tour de France.  It was amazing.  I saw the Louve.  I saw the Eiffel Tower.  I saw the Pont de l'Archeveche (the Love Lock bridge).

And in between all that, I spent almost an hour being silently terrified.

GOing to India in 2014

Today was our first official GO India meeting at Crossroads!  I'm super excited, as you can see.  I promised more information, and here is the beginning of the deluge:

What I'm doing, and when:

We will be helping run an adventure camp for the survivors of forced prostitution and the individuals who work beside them, October 19-28, 2014.

You can read more about previous trips
and the ongoing work in India on their blog.

Lessons from traveling abroad: How to meet people and make friends

When I arrived in Interlakken, I was suffering from a serious case of homesickness so I was thrilled when a girl stood in the middle of our dorm and announced,

"Does anyone want to go hike up a mountain on Friday?"

Everyone else kind of just looked at each other and basically ignored her but I was game, not only for a hike in a few days but also for everything else: "grocery" shopping (code for buying wine, chocolate, and cheese), half priced drinks at the underground beach party, cooking dinner together in the kitchen, meeting other Americans, giant chess, lounging in the not-so-secret hammock room…

Because Suzy knew the secrets to making friends on the move:

Lessons from traveling abroad: unwanted sexual attention

The first hostel I stayed in was in Zagreb, Croatia.  It was a mixed dorm with 4 bunk beds.  The first couple nights there were a couple other girls in the room, as was the hostel's policy to try and ensure there was never only one girl in a room.  However, a few nights in, I went to bed unaware that I would be the only girl that night.  A couple of the guys were sitting in their beds reading when I climbed into my bunk and pulled my eye shades on to block out the light.

Just as was falling asleep, a group of boys speaking a mixture of English and another language came in, loudly laughing and clearly drunk.

One of them shushed the others and I assumed pointed at me sleeping as there were then several hushed remarks of "Oh shit, it's a girl."

At this point I was annoyed but still drowsy and hoping to fall back to sleep as soon as they shut up and passed out.

Suddenly one of them started singing "Rape me."  At the time I did not know this was a real (obviously disgusting and horrible, regardless of how Cobain intended it) song by Nirvana, and thought the boy was simply making it up on the spot.

My heart was pounding as I started making plans about what I would do if they came near me.  I was on a top bunk so I figured I could swing out and kick them in the head, but there four or five of them and one of me.  I was also in a sleep sack.  I panicked, fully awake, long after they had turned out the lights and were snoring.

Luckily they all left the next day and a group of brothers and sisters stayed in my room the next night.

Lesson #1: Sexual harassment is real and it is everywhere.

Street Art in Zagreb

Wandering through Zagreb my first days there, I was thrilled by the street art that was everywhere.  I hadn't had enough exposure to Europe yet to realize this was a common occurrence, so I took tons of pictures:

Lessons from traveling abroad: enjoying stopovers

On Sarah's last night in Europe we decided to treat ourselves and go out to a nice restaurant.  Thanks to a helpful hostess we found through Airbnb, we found a charming and quirky restaurant not far from the apartment we rented for the night: VakVarju.

I greatly enjoyed a seasonal cold green apple soup, complete with a wafer of crystalized caramel.  It sounds weird, but was oh so delicious.  We also enjoyed the antics of a rather drunk man who gave an impromptu performance which involved dancing with a hat rack.  I tried to film it, I really did, but the best I got was this picture -->

The next morning, Sarah caught her plane and I set out on my solo adventure, starting with a 45 minute walk to the train station.  In those 45 minutes of profuse sweating from hauling my enormous backpack and smaller day pack in nearly 100 degree heat, I started to realize the physical conditioning I was in for that summer. When a strange older man walked up to me and started chatting with me and trying to guess personal information about me, I started to realize the safety challenges I would face that summer.  When I got to the train station far too early and wound up having the rendőrség (Hungarian police) come ask for my passport (I assume because I was loitering), I started to realize the complications that came with traveling in foreign lands when you don't know the language.  When I spent the rest of the long day riding packed in a tiny, non airconditioned car with five complete strangers, I started to realize how lonely this trip could actually be.  
And I started to worry.

But it was also beautiful and exciting, so I tried to focus on that: