NLD and Travel, Make Friends
[2:48] Hi, so, today’s topic will be about traveling and making friends, but before I start on that I wanted to make an announcement and let you know that I just became an ambassador for the NVLD project recently. And basically, an ambassador helps promote the NVLD project, writes blogs for them, and also helps them promote their fundraisers, and also helps advocate for NVLD more. And I wanted to do this because I wanted to help the NVLD project more and in a different way than I already am through the podcast and by donating money to them through the podcast. And I also wanted to get the podcast out there to people in a different way through the NVLD project. And I wanted to thank the NVLD project for selecting me to be an ambassador because I feel honored to be one and also because of my age and, uh, just, know, being uh, having another accomplishment to add to my experience makes me feel good. And, I just wanted to take a moment to thank them for selecting me and letting them know I will do my best to be a good ambassador for them. And, I hope they’re okay with me mentioning that on the podcast.
[4:25] So, like I said earlier, today’s topic is traveling and making friends and talking about how that relates to NLD. So, have you ever had challenges with making friends? Had challenges in social situations? Or with trying to navigate in a different country? I know I have. We'll be discussing those main topics today.
[4:48] So, I’ve had the advantage of being able to travel the world since I was 6 years old because my family homeschooled me before college. It was an online charter school that I was in before college.We visited at least one new country a year. As a result, I have visited 25 countries before I turned 25. This traveling gave me a broad worldview because I saw first and third world countries so I was exposed to both first and third problems.
[5:23] The article I would like to use is from the NVLD project and is titled “How I Enjoy Traveling with NVLD,” by Anna who is also an ambassador of the NVLD project. And she, “has dreamed about making the world a better place for people who think differently her whole life. She has worked as a newspaper reporter and in supported employment within community mental health to achieve these goals. When not writing her blog, This NVLD Life, she enjoys going on adventures with her husband and their cat, Mia. Anna is” like I said, “a Project Social Ambassador for The NVLD Project.”
[6:12] So, here’s the quote from the article, “It was a great experience, but it was challenging as an NVLD-er. One challenge was spending the whole week in those fairly large groups where only a few were friends of mine, and most I had only first met in trip planning meetings, which meant …I didn’t have any social down time. By college I had turned a corner in becoming pretty social, but I realized I still needed some time each day, or at least every couple of days, to recharge especially when spending 24/7 all week with lots of people I had not gotten to know yet. A therapist once described me as an extrovert with NVLD.” [laughs] I can understand that. “No matter how much I enjoy people, I still need to process things. Somehow, I still seem… to make it out fine on these trips and they were still worth the challenges.” End quote.
[7:23] So basically, what Anna was describing there were some trips she did in college, if I’m remembering correctly from the article and she, or maybe it was after college. I’d have to go back to the article to remember that piece. But there were trips that she did and she was with people in a social situation that she was–for a short period of time– and the people might be people that were there before or new people and it was a little tricky for her because of NVLD and because the people weren’t always the same people there.
And, I can relate to her because of the good amount of traveling I’ve done with my family. And I’ve had challenges with making friends– excuse me– when I was in different countries because I wasn’t sure if I was going to see them again. But, if you don’t see them again they– and they ghost you, then that’s not bad since you won’t see them again. I did learn from the Dalai Lama that the best way to make a difference in the world is to travel and make friends. And, I think we’ve done that in each country we’ve been to.
[8:49] And yes, I did meet the Dalai Lama when I was eight years old and we were in Italy. That was pretty cool. Um, so, and he said to us, “Travel and make friends” when my brother asked him a question: how to make a difference in the world. Basically, what was the best way to make a difference in the world was what he asked. And, he was, the Dalai Lama's answer was to “travel and make friends.” And, like I said, eat–beforehand– I think we’ve done that in every country we’ve been to.
[9:26] So, this is another quote from Anna’s article. “The last time I went on a plane was 2016. I hadn’t flown since 2006 at that point. Also, it was my first time flying alone. I was 34, but still there were a lot of NVLD related challenges that you need to process when you travel alone and cannot rely on others. I love airports and flying because traveling makes me feel so excited. I can just feel the energy of the excitement of the adventure I am about to go on in those environments, but they are also challenging to navigate with NVLD. At least, with s– my specific weaknesses. An error in figuring out where you are going could lead to missing a flight. You can’t turn back on a plane, or even once you arrive at the airport, in most cases, when you remember you forgot something. You can’t be prepared for what things are going to be like at the terminal you land in because you have never been there before. The stakes feel really high,” so I have– so—sorry– “so I leave early and give myself a lot of space to think about where I am going. I plan ahead before I leave.”
[10:52] So I can relate to this second quote from Anna also because I remember when I studied abroad in Norway–that was my first solo trip– in 2017. I was a little afraid and nervous, because it was my first time traveling by myself. But I only got lost once, and this was when I was in Norway, on the public transportation system there because I took the wrong direction but I quickly fixed it be–by getting off at the next stop and taking the right line. And I realized that I had taken the wrong direction when I was realizing, “oh! They’re not saying the right stops! Ahh! Gotta go in the right direction!” so I quickly fixed it. I also had challenges there with making friends because I wasn’t sure if I would see them again. Like I said earlier. But I realized that I should still make friends because it would be nice to have people to do things with while I was there. And you never know who you may run into when you’re traveling.
[12:04] It’s also challenging to be in a new country because of the language barrier sometimes. But not always. I think nowadays many people speak English so that’s helpful. We did have a saying when we would travel, “Well they speak English there.” [laughs] This basically meant we should be able to get by with only knowing the basics of the native language. This was helpful because it made it easier to learn the language and consequently you could learn fewer words and not have to worry so much about the other ones, unless you want to learn more. I remember when we went to Spain we confused Italian with Spanish because they’re very similar. But I think somehow the Spanish knew that part.
[12:51] [laughs] Um, another great thing about traveling is that you can learn more about the culture of the place and broaden your worldview. That definitely happened to me when I went to South Africa and compared the way they lived to the way Americans live. I was exposed to poverty for the first time at age 12 in Africa. I knew what it was before then but not how extreme it could be and what it looked like. This exposure helped me to appreciate things I have in life way more. I learned to share more, not take things for granted, live more freely, have more guts in my life. I still live with these–by these principles. I am a very determined person and put my all into everything I do. I share what I have with more people that I know more freely because I want to leave their life–sorry– lift their life up and help them improve it.
[14:04] What I’m trying to say is that I want to help that person by lifting their life up which means, not just giving them money and walking away, but trying to give them something they’re gonna– that’s gonna have more impact on them. Like, what’s a good example? So, when we were in Africa what we did– we were building schools there. And we were building schools because that community in Laguanaway, I think I said that correctly, needed schools to be able to have the children to learn better so that they didn’t have to learn in a dark brick building or outside when it was raining and the building that they had were leaking because of the roofs being thatched roofs and having holes in them. So we built schools that had better roofs and better foundations with the native people helping us.
[15:12] And, one of the experiences I had over there that I’ve talked about on this podcast before is realizing what jobs over there women can do, and what jobs men can do. And, I broke the rule over there by doing one of the men’s jobs: mixing cement. And, I was using a shovel and one of the native– one of the Africans– took my shovel away. I took it back, shook my head, “no'' and said “no.” And I was very defiant. And basically was trying to tell him “you can’t do that. I’m gonna keep doing this' ' and they– we were also doing a circle formation with the mixing of the cement and they were trying to make the circle smaller and push me out– the men. I was the only woman doing it. And I didn’t let them push me out. I stood my ground and stayed in the circle. I knew what they were trying to do even though I was only twelve years old. Um, I didn’t let them take advantage of me and not let them, you know, help them out, and show that women could do anything a man could do even though it’s in a different country. Um, I think it probably shocked them a lot and surprised them. But, that was one of the things I did over there. And, I also appreciate what I have more because I know that I have easier access to the bare necessities of life than others do on this planet.
[17:03] And that was something else I learned while I was there because I saw that people there don’t– they eat very basic things like beans and rice and meat if they can get it– if they have money for it. And they cook it over an open fire pit and in a pot. And, because they don’t have stoves, and i'm very simple meals. And, [laughs] this might sound gross but they also eat rats that they cook and then they cook them by putting a stick through them and cooking them over the open fire. Um, we didn’t eat any of those because we wanted to be safe and healthy, um, but, it just opened my eyes to a way– a new way of appreciating things and a new way of seeing how people live and, um, realizing that not everybody has the same access to things and the same ease of that access. They had to walk for miles to get water and the water wasn’t always clean and wasn’t purified like our water. And they had to carry it back in buckets on their heads and walk back the miles that they came to get it. Um, and they had to do the same for getting sand for mixing the cement. The water was for mixing the cement, so, you know, I don’t know if anything has changed since I’ve been there, but, it– if it has, it probably hasn’t changed that much and– but I hope that it has changed and it’s been made easier for them because they need easier lives and they need to be able to have easier access to the bear necessities to shelter and food and to finance and to um water and um, yeah, so–
[19:35] As I wrap I hope you learned something new today and are able to pass it onto someone else that you know. Also that others like me, NLD-ers, still have these challenges today. Please let me know what challenges you have experienced when traveling by commenting on this episode on livingwithnld.com, emailing me at livingwithnld@gmail.com or comment on Youtube please. And by the way, there is a new feature on anchor where you can make questions and I will be making a question on the episodes now with– that goes with the topic of the episode. So I will put that question with the episode and you can answer it if you like it. Hope you enjoyed this episode, talk to you next Friday.
Links for articles: https://nvld.org/how-i-enjoy-traveling-with-nvld-by-anna/
