Around the world in
22 years
A personal journey
The sun shone down on our white sedan as we drove down Manoa Hills. The clouds lifted after the morning rain and showed a bright, sunny Waikiki Beach.
Today, we weren’t going to the beach. We turned left and went deeper into the lush green mountains.
My father, working in scheduling for Delta Airlines’ flight attendants at the time, had met a few flight attendants based in Honolulu. One of them, Rita, connected us with a mutual friend, Marlene, who needed someone to watch her dog and house in Hawaii for two weeks.
At 6 years old, this was my second time in Hawaii and wouldn’t be my last. We spent two weeks there every summer for 10 years, making new friends in the state and learning our way around the island. My time spent in Hawaii launched the beginning of a life molded by the lessons learned from visiting new places, and established an immense love for travel.
My parents shared that same love and visited a variety of places as a couple. When I was born, they kept traveling with me. Upon their divorce in 2000, they continued to pursue adventure individually, with me by their side. The only new addition was court-mandated letters of permission each parent wrote prior to a vacation.
Since my father worked for Delta, this allowed us to fly for free on a standby pass to any Delta base around the world. The only downside: no guaranteed seats. Flying standby involves planning ahead, strange connections and adaptability.
Age 5, Anchorage, Alaska. Photo taken by my father, 2004
Age 2, en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2000
I became an airport guru. My meditation was waiting for a standby seat, my practice was the years of navigating different airports, and my moment of final peace was getting on the plane.
My mother, on the other hand, advocated for saving money to take trips. Rather than exchanging gifts for birthdays or Christmas, we took vacations. This put value in experience instead of objects. Travel opened my mind to what the world has to offer and challenged my own ways of thinking.
Now, at 22, I’ve had the privilege of visiting 45 countries on six continents, and I strive for still more: more trips, more ways to grow.
High hopes for deep revelations
At 4 years old, I boarded a flight to Detroit to visit my aunts for the holidays. I walked down the aisle of the plane in my big green Christmas dress with white tulle and velvet long sleeves. I walked confidently to my seat, my mother right behind me.
“I could see people looking leerily at us as we were getting on the plane. People usually don’t want kids next to them,” my mother said years later.
“You hopped in your seat, put your tray down and you said, ‘Peanuts, pretzels?’ Everyone started laughing, and the thing is, you knew what to do,” she added. “We got on an airplane, there was no crying, and you sat in your seat. The plane backed off from the jetway, and you’d be asleep before we took off.”
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Age 2, San Juan, Puerto Rico, with my father, Tom, and mother, Peggy, 2000
Beginning this project, I wanted to explore
why my parents started traveling with me at
such a young age. I sought some kind of deeper meaning, something about cultural awareness and an open mind.
Instead, this is how it went:
My mom liked to travel. My dad liked to travel. When I was born, they got me a passport and proceeded to chase countries with me in a stroller.
OK, I thought. This wasn’t the deep revelation I was expecting, but maybe they faced several challenges along the way. As someone who worked in childcare, I knew kids could be difficult to manage.
I expected another revelation about my parents’ adaptability and hoped to uncover any challenges they faced and how they overcame them. What I got was another simple answer.
“You were pretty easy,” they both said in separate interviews. The biggest challenge was when my ears wouldn't pop on a plane, and I'd start crying. (My parents would blow on my face so I would crinkle my nose and move my mouth to help open my ears.)
So much for my big revelations and expectations.
It was never complex. Even though cultural connection and opening my mind were never my parents’ explicit goals, it happened to me. I grew to love every moment of travel, being fully absorbed into another way of life.
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Age 2, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2000
A deep sense of curiosity
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Age 2, on the beach with new friends, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2000
Age 18, with one of the workers at our hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2017
As an only child, I never had someone my age on our trips. I craved the connection of a friend, even if for only a brief moment. In normal life, I was so shy I could barely order my own food at restaurants.
Being around people my age allowed me to open up. I felt like myself when I strayed from my parents — or a group, as I got older — to introduce myself to other people. I enjoyed hearing about where my new friends were from and what they liked to do.
When I was 7, my father and I visited Chile and we spent a day at Portillo Ski Resort. On one chairlift ride, two Chilean children around my age sat next to me. We smiled and giggled at one another before speaking.
“Hola, ¿cómo estás?” I said.
“Muy bien, ¿y tú?” one said.
“Bien gracias. ¿Te gusta esquiar?”
I don’t remember what they said back to me; my 7-year-old Spanish suggests I didn’t understand. I remember quickly saying “adiós,” and getting off the lift at the top of the mountain.
My face was red with embarrassment after speaking my broken Spanish. I turned to look behind me and saw the other kids smiling and waving. I waved back and felt relieved there was no judgment, only excitement for a new friend.
As I grew up, I kept chatting with locals in different parts of the world. It opened my mind to other lifestyles and gave me new understanding that “different” isn’t synonymous with “wrong.”
My curiosity is what fuels my pursuit of adventure. It makes me delve into travel books to find my next destination. It allows me to absorb the details of each place.
Travel is a privilege
Travel opened my eyes to the world, but blinded me to the experiences of others. When I was in elementary school, I assumed everyone traveled internationally and that my friends shared a similar upbringing.
At third grade parent-teacher conferences, my teacher told my mother I was bragging to other students about a trip from the previous summer.
“It’s not like you were naughty or anything,” my mother said. “You were just young and needed to learn that travel was a privilege.”
My mother and I started sitting down before each school year so she could remind me to put myself in others’ shoes. She reinforced that travel is a gift – and I needed to treat it with value.
Our conversations instilled a self-awareness that took time to wrap my head around. Travel felt like a part of me, but I feared if I spoke about my experiences I would come off as a brat just trying to brag. For years, I didn’t share my travel stories with friends, worried I'd be judged or get a bad reputation.
With a newfound understanding of my own privilege, I had to learn how to reopen up about my travels. I started speaking about trips with a sense of gratitude toward my parents and my time spent in another country.
I’d built a reputation not as a brat, but as an explorer.
Age 7, in front of Moai statues, Easter Island, 2008
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Age 16, hiking Machu Picchu in Peru, 2016
More time, not pins on the map
The summer before fifth grade, I got my first (and last) neck wallet.
It was teal with black zippers and stopped below my sternum. Only later did I realize that neck wallets screamed tacky tourist and should be avoided while traveling. My mom had purchased it for my next trip: a cruise in the Baltic Sea.
My dad, his girlfriend at the time, Patty, and I would be gone for 10 days visiting eight countries.
In Estonia, we had no excursion booked. We walked around the city center and sat down at a plaza for lunch. We split an apple tart with vanilla ice cream for dessert. As we battled for the last few bites, giggling at our competitiveness for some ice cream, a thought entered my head: I wish we could stay longer.
It made me recall something my mother told me before we departed: “It’s not about putting pins on a map. It’s about the experience.”
I wanted to delve more deeply into the city, not be herded back onto a ship just to be whisked off to a new place. I wondered what else Estonia had to offer. The same thought came back as we sailed between countries.
Seeing eight countries in 10 days is exciting, but it’s exhausting. There wasn’t time to relax or slow down, it felt like sprinting a marathon.
All eight countries deserved more time. We had more to experience and more to learn. I didn’t want to look at the surface; I wanted to walk around the streets and feel a sense of familiarity, to fully understand the culture and way of life.
As my mom said: Travel isn’t about how many stamps land in my passport. The number doesn’t matter. What’s important is the time spent with the people I love. Travel is about fulfilling my curiosity and feeling like I’ve learned something new.
Age 18, walking through Galway, Ireland, 2018
The dark side of travel
Coming home from our dinner on Avenida 9 de Julio, I held my father’s hand tightly. Buenos Aires bustled with people clasping shopping bags, and big groups took up the whole sidewalk.
In the crowd, a man shoved a blonde woman into the wall, trying to get her purse as she shouted for the police. He shoved her harder, and the woman released her purse on the impact. My legs went numb, and I gripped my dad’s shirt. The man pointed a gun into the crowd as he hopped on a motorcycle and fled.
I had never felt that scared on a trip before. My mother always educated me on the importance of safety and awareness while traveling, but this was a firsthand experience as to what could occur.
My eyes were opened to the dark side of travel. I realized the reality of dangers like kidnappings and theft that could affect anyone, including myself.
Although I was scared, I learned that fear couldn't hold me back from pursuing more adventures. Foreign travel comes with risks, but so does leaving my house every day. There are ways to be careful; it’s a matter of paying attention and trusting my gut.
The beauty to the dark side is that it’s only one aspect of travel, not the entire definition. One bad experience didn’t shape my perspective of an entire country. My father and I still enjoyed our time in Argentina – from Calle 9 de Julio to the colorful streets in the famous La Boca neighborhood.
I still recommend that people visit this beautiful country, because it’s important to take risks rather than hold yourself back merely because of a what-if.
A familial connection
My parents began to support, and indulge, my newfound taste for risk-taking. They liked the wild side as much as I did.
My first time out of the country without my parents was to Costa Rica for a language immersion program the summer after my freshman year of high school.
My 10 days in a small Costa Rican town were spent with cold showers, a tarantula roommate, hikes in the jungle and days at the beach. I shot a gun at a barrel with a red spray-painted target on the back, and swung on a homemade swing that overlooked the jungle.
Costa Rica gave my parents license to take steps in an adventurous direction. Every year, it seemed like they were trying to out-do each other. This process brought all of us closer together. Travel was our method of familial bonding. The more adventurous the trips were, the more memories we would share.
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Age 16, the Sears Tower, Chicago, Illinois, 2016
Age 1, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1999
Age 15, Jazz festival Ascona, Switzerland, 2015
One year, my father and I flew to Switzerland to go to a jazz festival to see one of our favorite Minneapolis-based bands. Another year, my mother and I hiked across the Costa Rica-Panama border for Christmas.
For spring break my junior year, I hiked Machu Picchu with my father. We drove all over Peru on bumpy, winding roads that looked like we were going to plummet off a cliff.
Machu Picchu, Peru, 2016
To round out my high school experience, my parents came together to celebrate my graduation with a trip around the world. I would be gone for a month visiting six countries in two continents.
I started with my mother in Paris, where we walked marathon distances all over the city seeing the sights. From there we flew to Madrid, Spain, and visited Toledo and Segovia. After Madrid, we went to Bilbao, on the northern coast of Spain, and to Pamplona to watch the Fiesta de San Fermin running with the bulls.
From Spain, we flew back to Paris and met my dad. My mom left, and my dad took me to Split, Croatia. We swam in the ever-blue Adriatic Sea, took water taxis into town, visited Croatia’s neighboring islands and drove to Mostar, Bosnia.
From Croatia, we flew 13 hours to Hanoi, Vietnam. We went on a food tour, visited the Hanoi Hilton and biked in a downpour. People walked through traffic without stopping, and scooters were packed to loading capacity.
To close this adventure, we went to Tokyo, Japan, where we ate sushi, walked through Shibuya and toured the Tokyo Skytree. People offered to give us directions when we looked lost and moved out of the way if we were trying to take a picture.
Throughout high school, the relationship between my parents grew into a friendship. They swapped travel stories and tips; they smiled and laughed on the phone. Seeing my parents able to bond after previous disputes brought a new light into my life.
Travel seemed to bring us all together in spite of previous disagreements. I saw that travel had the ability to heal and ease stress — it was a way for people to connect, regardless of their differences.
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Age 18, in a water taxi Split, Croatia, 2017
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Age 19, on a sunset cruise Tamarindo, Costa Rica, 2018
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Age 18, at the top of the Eiffel Tower Paris, France, 2017
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Age 18, walking through the sushi markets,Tokyo, Japan, 2017
The difference between traveling and living
My pride and joy is a cherry red suitcase. It has holes in the fabric, and sometimes the zipper falls off the track. The extendable handle gets stuck and requires my whole weight to jolt the handle down into its retracted position.
My heart skips a beat whenever I wait at baggage claim for the suitcase, fearing that it fell apart after being ruthlessly thrown into the underbelly of an airplane. It surprises me every time by surviving the flight.
It has its scars, but it is still traveling by my side.
My mother gave me the red suitcase when I was 8 years old for a trip to Chile and Easter Island. She bought it when she was 21 for $30 at Marshalls. It was our baton-passing ceremony.
The suitcase came with me on my cruise through the Baltic Sea, across the world to Australia. I lived out of it for a month during an internship in Costa Rica, and took it with me during my study abroad experience in Sevilla, Spain, as a junior at Arizona State University.
Las Setas, Sevilla, Spain, 2019
I arrived in Spain feeling more confident than ever. I was well-traveled and spoke fluent Spanish. But after a few days, my confidence dwindled. I knew no one in my program; it would be a new start. I thought about graduating late, leaving my friends behind in Arizona, and being alone in a foreign place.
These thoughts plagued my mind and messed with my identity. I’d been known as the traveler my whole life, so why was I struggling? How could someone who’d been to so many places miss home so much? Did I even like to travel, or did I think I did only because my parents liked it?
This should have been a breeze for me, but instead I was anxious and craved familiarity.
I later learned the difference between traveling somewhere and living somewhere. Vacation indicates there is an endpoint to the stay – not so with that word living. That extended period of time makes it more difficult to adjust and causes culture shock. It was common, I knew: Many people who move abroad experience culture shock.
The longing for home eased as I got into a routine with my classes, met new people and took weekend trips. My love and curiosity of new cultures found me again. Being on my own with a long-term investment in another country showed me I loved travel for my own reasons.
Coming home for Christmas after being abroad, my father got me a new suitcase. It was a similar size, with four wheels instead of two and a checked pattern on the outside. The zippers were fully intact and there were no holes in sight.
“Now you can finally retire the red suitcase, Tay,” my father said. I forced a smile and laughed.
Guess which one sits in the garage and which one is lugged around the world with me, probably winded and out of breath?
I can’t get rid of the little red suitcase. It’s become a part of me.
About the project:
Traveling and getting my passport stamped was second nature to me for the longest time. It helped shape me into who I am today. I grew up in Minnesota and had a wanderlust like no other. My parents showed me the world, and I learned several things along the way – mainly, that I wanted travel to always be a part of my life. Coming to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2017, I knew that working internationally was a goal of mine. I wanted to have the opportunity to write about my adventures for magazines or become a foreign correspondent. I completed a minor in Spanish in order to better connect with people in other places, and understand how important being bilingual is in my role as a journalist. Now, as graduation nears, I dream of a reporting job in place where I can put those language skills to use, with a goal of one day working in another part of the world. Travel writing, of course, remains on the table.
Age 20, walking through Lisbon, Portugal, 2019
I’ve always understood that travel is important to me, but I never fully understood why. Being a part of Barrett, The Honors College, I was required to create a thesis project. After several weeks of brainstorming, I landed on the idea to write a blog analyzing the lessons I’ve learned through my many travels. Through self-reflection exercises and interviews, I pinpointed specific takeaways from each trip. This project allowed me to practice travel writing and personal narrative techniques. It also shed new light on my love for travel, while allowing me to reminisce during a pandemic that brought travel restrictions.
My thesis was directed by Professor of Practice Pauline Arrillaga, and my second reader was Professor of Practice Fernanda Santos. Before coming to the Cronkite School, Pauline worked as the enterprise editor for The Associated Press, and Fernanda was the Phoenix bureau chief for The New York Times. Outside of journalism, we all share a similar love for travel, making this a natural collaboration. These two faculty members invested their time into weekly and monthly meetings, setting deadlines for the project, line-editing drafts and aiding in the overall website design. To Pauline and Fernanda: Thank you both so much for your time and investment in this project. It wouldn’t have looked the same without either of you.
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