Kelly Westhoff and Quang Nystrom on the Staten Island Ferry
By, Kelly Westhoff
by Kelly Westhoff
These days, the world is a dangerous place: hurricanes, tsunamis, terrorist bombings. Some people think we should all stay home, shut our doors and pray the global evils don’t track us down. Maybe we should do the opposite: pack up and head out to face the world.
This is exactly what my husband, Quang Nystrom, and I have decided to do. Oct. 20 we will say good-bye to the Twin Cities and hello to the world, embarking on a seven-month trek to 10 different countries, starting in Mexico City and ending in Amsterdam. Along the way, we’ll stop in Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Beijing and Rome.
We’ll spend the first month in Mexico, visiting colonial cities like Taxco, Guanajuato and Zacatecas. We will witness a Day of the Dead celebration and tour the town of Tequila and its blue agave fields.
We’re in search of side trips down bumpy roads, unique stories, songs and foods. We want to linger should a particular park, ruin, museum or shrine catch our eye. We want to follow the gentle rhythms of a tucked-away village and meet the people who call these places home.
We are not going around the globe to be comfortable, but instead, to break out of our comfort zone; to step from our secure, first-world existence into the messy clatter that is the rest of the world.
Despite all the media proclaiming the rest of the world unsafe, unsanitary or simply un-American, the only true hope humans have of combating evil is in meeting, talking and believing in the good the other has to offer.
Of course, there is a Catch-22 in our travel plans. We can say we want to reach out to people from other cultures and countries, but we realize that we are among a very small percentage of the global population that can actually afford to go and meet people on their own turf. We’ll try to be mindful of this.
We won’t always expect citizens of other countries to speak English. Of the seven months we’ll be on the road, four will be spent in countries where either my husband or I speak the language. It will be a challenge for each of us to rely on each other for words. I am not used to letting someone speak for me. Neither is Quang. While I’m relieved to know that we will have a second and third language on the road, I can’t help but wonder if all the translating will create tension.
I also wonder about the way we look: we are a biracial couple. Here in the Twin Cities, I’ve sensed curious eyes on us in public and we know some disagree with our marriage. Will people in other countries stare? Comment? In a Mexico guidebook, three hostel listed frown on renting rooms to unmarried couples. Would someone deny us a room because we are biracial?
We have dreamed about this trip since we got engaged in 2003. Today, we’ve been married a year and a half and the idea of not taking this leap, of not venturing out into the world together, would certainly fill us with regret in 20 years’ time.
Excited to head out, we are nervous and anxious, too. Surely we will get sick, miss home and argue our way through a handful of towns. But what we will gain in return—awe for the people, and the icebergs, jungles, ruins and busy cities of the world—will fuel our hearts and minds for a lifetime to come.
Kelly Westhoff and Quang Nystrom will blog their adventures at
www.kellywesthoff.com
