I was born with an American passport. I grew up in California, a state with full voting representation in Congress, never once wondering if I was “really” American. These aren’t things I earned. They’re the accident of where I was born.

Puerto Rico is the oldest colony in the world — first Spain’s, then, since 1898, America’s. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They serve in our military, pay into Social Security, and are subject to federal law. They can’t vote for president, and they have no voting representation in Congress. Americans without the full rights of Americans. There’s a word for that arrangement, and it isn’t a comfortable one.

I didn’t understand this in a felt, human way until I spent a month living there.

A Month in Isabela

In March 2024, I rented a beach house in Isabela with two friends. No real plan beyond staying a while and seeing what happened. Most mornings, I woke up, pulled on a bathing suit, and walked two minutes to the water, letting the day start slow before my first work call.

We found our rhythm: a Saturday farmers’ market, weekend hikes to waterfalls and hidden beaches we only found by word of mouth, a baseball game, art walks through murals in Rincón that told the island’s history in color. On the surface, the kind of month that makes people jealous when you post about it.

But the place that taught me the most wasn’t a beach or a trail. It was a neighborhood bar.

The Bar That Was a Window

Pool table, an aux cord passed around all night, cold beer, locals who knew our names within a couple of weeks. Co-owned by a U.S. Coast Guard member and his childhood friends, and frequented by a mix of tourists, Coast Guards, and locals — a small, unofficial meeting point between the island and the mainland presence stationed on it.

What struck me was how openly people talked about politics. Independence. Statehood. Keeping the status quo. These aren’t abstract positions in Puerto Rico — they’re identity, history, and daily life at once, and people did not agree. Some nights got heated. But the disagreement never fractured anything. Every vision for the island’s future was treated as legitimate. Whatever anyone believed about statehood or sovereignty, by the end of the night, everyone at that bar was Puerto Rican. Full stop.

That openness, paired with the shared identity underneath it, is something I rarely see back home.

The Woman at the Bar

One night, I met a woman who’d grown up in Puerto Rico, married a Coast Guard member, and moved with him to Southern California. She visited family often, and she and her husband were now talking about buying property on the island for an Airbnb — already fraught, given how fast gentrification is pricing out the communities that make Puerto Rico what it is.

Moving to the mainland, she said, changed how she understood her own citizenship. She felt privileged now — access to any food she wanted, no unpredictable power outages, none of the quiet confusion of not being sure whether she counted as fully American. Living in California had shown her what it meant to live in a state instead of a colony. In hindsight, she could finally see how disenfranchised and second-class Puerto Ricans were treated.

Then the clarity curdled. Now she wanted to come back and buy in — become one of the mainlanders extracting value from the very island she’d just described as exploited. Her politics had shifted, too, further right, more in line with her in-laws. Talking about homelessness, she said: Why don’t they just get a job like me? It’s a choice for them to stay on drugs and live on the streets.

I sat with that for a long time after. Here was someone who’d just articulated, more clearly than I could have, what it feels like to be a second-class American — and in the same breath, reached for the same extractive playbook and the same hardened judgment of the vulnerable that keeps systems like that one in place. Not quite hypocrisy. More like watching someone absorb the logic of a system the moment they’re let inside it.

What I Left With

Puerto Rico is full of sharp, passionate, critical thinkers — people who love their island fiercely and want it to thrive, not just survive. Under its current status, that isn’t happening. Not because the people aren’t capable of it. Because the structure they’re operating inside was never built for them to fully succeed.

So as America turns 250, I keep coming back to one question: Is this the America we want to be? A country that has held the same island in colonial status for over 125 years, whose citizens fight in our wars and can’t vote for our president. A country where the clearest insight into that injustice, once absorbed by someone with means, can turn so easily into another form of taking.

That’s not the America I want to celebrate blindly. It’s the America I want to keep looking at, honestly — including the uncomfortable parts, the parts that implicate people I liked, the parts that implicate me.

I left Isabela with a tan, a phone full of beach photos, and something heavier: a clearer sense of what it means to hold a passport that actually works the way it’s supposed to — and how many people wearing the same label don’t get that deal.

That’s not nothing. On the Fourth of July, it feels like the whole point.

You aren’t where you were, and you aren’t yet where you’re going. You’re suspended in a pressurized tube at 35,000 feet, disconnected from your life by lack of Wi-Fi and the strange, recycled air of the cabin. It’s the perfect environment for a specific kind of honesty.

I was halfway through a ten-hour flight from London to Los Angeles in October 2023. I was tired, draped in a thin airline blanket, and stuck in that hazy state where your internal clock doesn’t know what continent it belongs to.

Next to me was a woman. Her name was Jelena.

She was reading, and I was feeling conversational. It started as a simple icebreaker—the kind you use when you’ve been sitting near someone for five hours, and the silence starts to feel heavy. I asked her what the book was about.

She put it down and told me: it was a story about high school sweethearts. They broke up because of youth, because of life, because their priorities hadn’t aligned yet. The novel picks up years later, when they are adults, trying to find their way back to each other.

Out of curiosity, I asked, “Has that ever happened to you? A missed connection, or the right person at the wrong time?”

The five-hour conversation

What started as a book review turned into a five-hour deep dive.

We forgot about the person in front of me leaning their seat so far back and the empty free bottles of water. We talked about taking risks, the kind that make your stomach drop. We talked about the art of saying “no” to a fuckboy. We evaluated dating green flags (an avid listener), which we should have seen, and the red flags (inconsistent communication) that we chose to ignore in past relationships.

Mostly, we talked about how to stop catering to other people’s timelines, how to put our own happiness first, even when it feels selfish.

It was raw. It was vulnerable. It was two women, somewhere over the ocean, dissecting their lives because they knew they might never see each other again.

Internet friends

Three years later, Jelena and I are what I’d call “internet friends.”

We follow each other on Instagram. We occasionally ♥️ a photo or reply to a story. For the most part, our lives don’t intersect. She exists in a square on my phone, a digital ghost of that flight.

But I think about that conversation often. It’s a reminder of how important it is to stay open—to the person in the next seat, to the conversation you didn’t plan on having, to the relationships that don’t need to last forever to be meaningful.

I hope we reunite one day. I’d love to grab a drink on solid ground and see where her life has landed.

But I’m also okay with a couple more years going by and it not happening. Some people aren’t meant to be the whole book; they can be a page.

Real connections

Meeting Jelena reminded me that we are never as alone as we think we are.

I’m grateful she showed up in my life at exactly the moment I needed her, halfway between London and home, somewhere over the Atlantic, reminding me to live for myself.

Not the version of my life that fits someone else’s schedule. Not the algorithm’s version of love.

Just mine.

A slow conditioning that teaches you that your body will be seen before it is heard. In the U.S., we call it “normal.” We learn to pose before we learn to speak. We learn to be taken seriously, but never too seriously.

I thought I understood the gaze. Until I left.

The directness of Marrakesh

The first time I went to Morocco in 2017, what struck me wasn’t that it existed, but how direct it was.

In Marrakesh, a boy—no older than five—reached out and pinched my butt as I walked by. I froze. Not because it hurt, but because of the muscle memory already on display. Something had already been taught. A woman’s body was public property.

During that same trip to Morocco, I was in Tangier, and I was followed by young men whose attention didn’t feel curious—it felt insistent. Expected.

And when I didn’t respond, the shift was immediate.

The gaze, unfiltered

In Egypt in 2025, I noticed something different.

I made eye contact with a man as I turned the corner. His gaze moved slowly—deliberate, unhidden. I wondered if I should cover myself in the 100-degree heat to disappear. It’s a strange math we do: weighing heat exhaustion against the cost of being noticed.

And in that moment, everything inside me tightened.

Shock, first. Then anger. Then something more unsettling—helplessness.

Because what is the right response in a moment like that?

Do I cover up? Do I shout? Do I walk faster? There’s no clean answer. Only trade-offs. What travel revealed wasn’t a new problem; it was just the same logic, stripped of its politeness.

And that’s when it clicked: This wasn’t about permission.

About what a culture quietly agrees is acceptable, and what it asks women to absorb.

A different relationship to the body

But travel also showed me something else.

While in Lagos, Portugal, in August 2022, I spent an afternoon at the beach watching families spread across the sand. Nearby, a young girl—maybe seven or eight years old—ran in and out of the water topless while her father chased after her close behind. Around them, grown women sunbathed topless too.

And no one cared. No one stared. No one treated their bodies like a spectacle. What struck me wasn’t the nudity itself, but the absence of tension around it.

In the U.S., women’s bodies often feel loaded with contradiction: be attractive, but respectable; visible, but not too visible. But on that beach, the female body felt ordinary. Unburdened.

It made me realize how much the meaning attached to women’s bodies is culturally taught.

The same body. Different social agreement.

What patriarchy demands

And this realization stayed with me throughout my travels. In many places, gender roles felt more explicitly defined: men as providers, women as dependents, and authority flows in one direction. The expectations were often spoken aloud rather than implied.

But what stayed with me were the conversations with men in these places.

Many spoke about the pressure to be the “head of household,” to carry financial responsibility alone, to live up to a rigid idea of masculinity. Their roles were just as prescribed—just rewarded differently.

Patriarchy doesn’t only constrain women. It organizes everyone.

But it does not impact everyone equally.

Who belongs to themselves?

Because across all of these experiences, one feeling kept resurfacing: that women’s bodies, in too many places, do not fully belong to them.

Not in the U.S., where objectification is polished and packaged.

Not in Morocco, where it can be physical and overt.

Not in Egypt, where it can feel unapologetically visible.

And not even in Portugal, which felt freer in some ways, but revealed something equally important: that the social meaning of a woman’s body is never fixed. It changes across cultures, across histories, across collective agreements about what deserves attention and what does not.

Different expressions. Different levels of freedom. Different kinds of scrutiny.

But always the same underlying truth: women learn early that their bodies will be interpreted by others long before they fully belong to themselves.

Travel strips away the illusion of “normal.”

It forces comparison. It sharpens contrast. It makes visible what you’ve been taught to ignore.

And what unsettled me most wasn’t how different these experiences were; it was how familiar they felt.

Just without the filter.

Once you see that pattern—across countries, across cultures—you can’t unsee it.

You start asking different questions. About safety. About autonomy. About what it means to move through the world in a body that doesn’t seem to belong to you.

And maybe that’s the real story.

Not just the people we meet while traveling—but the systems we meet through them.

The world doesn’t ask women who they are. It tells them what they are, and waits to see if they’ll agree.

Growing up, it was mostly just my parents and me. I didn’t grow up surrounded by a Chinese community or the kind of cultural ecosystem that makes identity feel effortless.

If anything, I learned early how to blend in.

It wasn’t until later that I started leaning into my identity—learning Mandarin, asking for family recipes, getting excited about cultural holidays. Loving being Chinese-American wasn’t something I inherited naturally. I had to be intentional about it. I had to learn to love people like me, shaped by immigrant parents, American classrooms, and the quiet expectation to adapt.

But then I started traveling more.

And the more I traveled, the more I began to notice something that surprised me:

Chinese people are everywhere—quietly, steadily, leaving traces of home in every corner of the world.

Not just in major global cities. I mean everywhere—in small towns, in unexpected neighborhoods, in places where you wouldn’t think Mandarin would ever find you.

Once I noticed it, I started doing what I always do when I feel unsteady in a new place.

I start looking for Chinese food.

Because there is a specific kind of homesickness that doesn’t feel like sadness.

It feels like hunger.

When I travel, I miss my mother’s cooking before I miss my own bed. I miss soy sauce, ginger, scallions, and the sting of vinegar. I miss the flavors I grew up with—the ones that feel less like food and more like proof that I belong somewhere.

Chinese food abroad is not just a meal.

It’s a portal.

Bologna: Mandarin Over English

In June 2024, I was in Bologna, Italy, overdue for lunch and dangerously close to getting hangry. I walked past a Japanese-Chinese restaurant and almost kept going—until I noticed the staff were Chinese.

I stepped in.

Before anyone spoke to me in Italian, they spoke to me in Mandarin.

“Dine in or take out?”

I asked if they spoke English.

They shook their heads. Only Italian and Mandarin.

So we spoke Mandarin.

In a world where English has become the default language of travel, it felt almost rebellious to rely on Mandarin instead. It made me strangely happy.

I left with a full stomach and the quiet thrill of remembering that my language belongs in the world, too.

Albania: Becoming the Translator

A month later, I was in northern Albania, preparing for a two-day trek through the mountains.

At my hotel, I noticed three Chinese travelers on the same road, looking for our guesthouse. They didn’t speak English—only Mandarin.

Within minutes, I became their translator.

I helped them get their room keys, figure out the Wi-Fi, and ask about meal options. We set off for the hike together the next morning, but got separated on the trail. Hours later, we found each other again at a small mountain café, as if it was fate.

They were kind and generous—the kind of travelers who make a journey feel human.

Before we parted, they told me that if I ever went to Shenzhen, I had to look them up and stay with them.

Not “maybe.”

But you have to.

Madrid: The Woman I Want to Become

More recently, I met a Taiwanese woman who runs a café in the heart of old Madrid.

She was the kind of woman who makes you pause—not because she’s flashy, but because she seems grounded in her own life.

We spoke in Mandarin. I asked about her story—when she came, why she came, and whether she goes back to Taiwan often.

She told me she returns every year.

She spoke Mandarin, English, and Spanish with ease, as if language was something she carried lightly. She told me about her grandchildren with warmth and pride.

I walked out of her café feeling strangely emotional.

Because I realized:

I want to be her when I grow up.

A woman who has traveled, adapted, and survived—and still has softness left.

Travel keeps reminding me that movement is part of being human. People have always moved toward safety, prosperity, opportunity, love, and possibility. Borders may harden, and politics may shift, but movement is ancient.

And the Chinese diaspora is living proof of that.

Not just in the dramatic stories of migration, but in the everyday ones too—in restaurant kitchens, in mountain hotels, in quiet cafés on old streets. In people building lives in places that once felt impossibly far away.

It’s a voice.
A familiar warmth in an unfamiliar place.
A reminder that I’m not alone.

Because when I hear Mandarin in unexpected corners of the world, I feel something settle inside me.

A quiet pride.
A quiet belonging.

And I think back to the realization I keep having, over and over again:

Chinese people are everywhere.

Not as a coincidence. Not as a novelty. But as evidence of resilience, of movement, of the way our people have always found their way toward possibility and made home wherever we land.

And maybe that’s why, no matter where I go, I keep finding us.

Because we’ve always been here.

With traditions measured in millennia and a culinary lineage dating back to the domestication of maize, Oaxaca is unlike anywhere else in Mexico. It is home to eight regions and sixteen Indigenous peoples. More than a million Oaxaqueños—nearly a quarter of the state’s population—speak local languages. This is a place where food is not just nourishment; it is memory, survival, ceremony, and legacy.

My friend Carolina and I decided to meet Oaxaca where it lives: in the streets. We skipped breakfast, giddy and empty-stomached, and made our way to Calle de Macedonio Alcalá in the Centro Histórico. Outside the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, we met our guide, Valeria.

It turned out to be just the two of us on the tour. A private walk through Oaxaca’s soul.

Valeria greeted us with warmth that felt immediate and genuine, the kind that makes you relax your shoulders without realizing they were tense. She was radiant with excitement, eager to share her city, her story, and her food.

We ate memelas—thick corn tortillas topped with beans, asiento, and cheese, crisped on a comal. Then tamales, drenched in salsa negra and steamed in banana leaves, are soft and fragrant. We tasted mole pastes, the concentrated beginnings of Oaxaca’s legendary sauces. We folded into tlayudas, vast and crackly, layered with beans, cabbage, meat, and quesillo.

At one stop, Valeria ordered what she called Oaxacan “charcuterie”: chapulines (toasted grasshoppers), silky strands of quesillo (Oaxacan string cheese), roasted corn kernels, and pickled vegetables. We sipped tejate—a pre-Hispanic drink made from corn, cacao, mamey pits, and cacao flower, frothy and earthy, served in a gourd cup.

Valeria, Returning Home

Between each bite, Valeria shared herself.

She was born in Oaxaca but spent much of her adult life in Valle de Guadalupe, working in marketing at a winery. Growing up, Oaxaca de Juárez wasn’t always safe. Her family encouraged her to leave—to find opportunity, stability, a “better” life elsewhere. That’s what people do, she told us. They leave and go north. They don’t come back.

When she did return, her abuela was confused.

Valeria laughed gently when she shared this. Like someone’s first Saturn return, she felt pulled home. Coming back has been a blessing. She is taking everything she learned—marketing, food, hospitality—and pouring it back into the place that made her. That is why she leads these street food tours. That is why she also works on marketing for a local brewery. She is building something rooted, something reciprocal.

At Mercado de la Merced, she paused. Her voice softened. This was where she used to come with her abuela. She remembered holding her hand between stalls, the smell of masa in the air. The market wasn’t just a place to buy food—it was a container of her childhood.

At every stop, we met the people cooking. We learned their names. We heard fragments of their stories. They were all women.

“Women are the backbone,” Valeria said. “They feed everyone.”

When Food Becomes A Commodity

These women have fed generations. And yet, many are being pushed out. Oaxaca is becoming more popular, more touristy. The foodie boom has drawn foreign investors, new restaurants, and rising rents. Street vendors—keepers of ancestral recipes—are being displaced.

Valeria did not speak with bitterness. She spoke with clarity.

As someone who returned to reconnect with her Oaxacan roots, she navigates this moment with dignity and care. She honors the community while welcoming travelers. She teaches through experience. By introducing us to these vendors, by telling their stories, she showed us how to explore consciously.

Support local. Learn names. Eat where history lives.

That day in Oaxaca, I didn’t just taste food. I tasted continuity. I tasted lineage. I tasted what it means to belong somewhere—and what it costs when places become consumable.

This tour became a reminder: stay connected to your history. Know where you come from. And as travelers, listen to the people who are rooted. Let them lead. Let their stories guide your steps.

We move through places, but we are guests.

Travel, at its best, is not extraction. It is a relationship. It is reverence. It is choosing to walk with care through someone else’s home.

It surprises me every time—how easily the truth can slip out of your mouth to someone who has no history with you, no expectations, no carefully constructed version of who you are supposed to be. Sometimes it feels safer to hand your heart to someone who doesn’t yet know its shape. They can’t compare it to who you used to be. They can only meet you as you are.

With friends and family, our stories are layered with context. They’ve watched us grow, stumble, and recover. They remember earlier versions of us. When we try to share something tender, it often comes out tangled—half explanation, half defense. We don’t just tell them what hurts. We tell them why it hurts, and why it matters, and how we’ve already tried to be okay.

But with strangers, there is no preamble.

There is just the moment.

The Kind of Intimacy Travel Creates

In July of 2024, that moment arrived for me on a bus from Skopje, Macedonia, to Sofia, Bulgaria.

Jonathan was sitting alone in the row ahead of me. Halfway through the ride, we started talking through that narrow sliver of space between two bus seats—the kind of accidental intimacy travel creates. He was American, from New York—a traveler, like me. We bonded over our shared love of Spanish, the thrill of discovering new places, and the quiet courage that comes with solo travel.

By the time we crossed into Bulgaria, we’d exchanged numbers and decided to spend time together in Sofia. I invited him to join me for a full day of exploration: a walking tour and food tour.

Between the two tours, we visited St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral—an iconic Sofia landmark, immense and golden, humming with reverence. Outside, our guide had explained a tradition in Orthodox Christianity: lighting a candle for the dead is an act of prayer, faith, and remembrance. A symbol of the soul’s journey toward Christ. A bridge between the living and the departed.

I already knew what I wanted to do.

A Candle for Melanie

A few months before, my friend Melanie had suddenly passed away. She was a victim of a tragic crime. She was only 33 years old. The shock of it still lived in my body. I carried it with me across borders, across languages, across time zones.

Grief has a way of becoming your silent travel companion.

I stepped forward and lit a candle for her.

Jonathan lit one too.

We found a bench inside the cathedral and sat quietly. The air felt heavy in the way sacred spaces often do—dense with the weight of unspoken prayers. He told me about his dad. I told him about Melanie.

And then I began to cry.

Not the polite kind. The kind that rises before you can stop it.

Jonathan didn’t rush me. He didn’t ask for a story or a timeline or an explanation. He just said, softly, “Oh… you’re thinking about your friend, huh?”

That was it.

And somehow, that was everything.

In that moment, words felt unnecessary. His simple question didn’t try to fix me. It didn’t try to understand the logic of my grief. It acknowledged the truth of it. It permitted me to feel without translating. To let my body speak instead of my mouth.

At that point, I hadn’t yet found language for why Melanie’s death felt so immense. I couldn’t articulate what she represented in my life, or why her absence echoed so loudly. I only knew that I missed her. That something in me had broken open.

Jonathan didn’t need me to explain.

He saw me.

What It Means to Be Seen

In the months since, I’ve returned to that moment again and again. He probably doesn’t realize how much that afternoon meant to me. How comforted I felt by his presence. How, in a season when grief made me feel isolated from the world, a near-stranger offered me exactly what I needed: gentle recognition.

There is something quietly miraculous about that.

Sometimes strangers meet us more honestly than the people who know us best. Not because our loved ones don’t care, but because strangers don’t carry our past. They don’t see who we were. They only see who we are, right now, in this moment.

Travel creates these pockets of humanity—brief intersections where two lives touch and then drift apart. And yet, they leave marks. They linger.

That is the gift of the road.

Not just the places it shows you—but the people who see you, if only for a heartbeat, exactly as you are.

Traveling alone taught me confidence early on. It pushed me outside my comfort zone in quiet, steady ways—asking for directions, navigating unfamiliar transit systems, striking up conversations with strangers. It made me more curious and more open. I tried new foods, wandered into places I hadn’t planned to visit, and learned how much I enjoy my own company.

But for a long time, even though I was traveling solo, I was traveling fast.

One country in ten days. One city every two days. I raced through landmarks, checked boxes, and tried to see as much as possible. I was moving independently, but not intentionally. Travel felt more like consumption than connection—more like a to-do list than a dialogue with the place I was in.

Then I started traveling slowly. And everything shifted.

Solo Travel Isn’t About Being Brave

When I tell people I travel alone, I often get the same reactions:
“Oh, you’re so brave.”
“Why are you traveling alone?”
“Won’t you get bored and lonely?”
“Don’t you feel unsafe as a woman?”

These questions reveal more about the world we live in than about solo travel. Women are taught—explicitly and implicitly—to see independence as risk. Solo female travel isn’t inherently dangerous, but it’s often framed that way because fear is something we’re conditioned to carry.

That said, solo travel isn’t about being reckless. I take precautions the same way I do at home. I don’t wander down dark alleys. I’m mindful at night and usually go out after dark only if I’m with others. And sometimes, if someone asks, I’ll say I’m traveling with a group. These aren’t limitations—they’re practical choices that allow me to move through the world with confidence and ease.

For me, safety is about awareness, not fear. And once that foundation is in place, solo travel becomes expansive rather than restrictive.

Traveling alone has nothing to do with fearlessness. It has everything to do with curiosity, presence, and connection. Slowing down gave those things room to deepen.

Slow Travel Changes Everything

Slow solo travel lets me experience a place from the inside rather than the surface. I have time to explore neighborhoods without an agenda, to return to the same café, to notice patterns and rhythms that don’t reveal themselves on a tight schedule. I’m no longer trying to see everything…I’m trying to understand something.

Solo doesn’t always mean alone, either. Sometimes it’s wandering a city entirely on my own. Sometimes it’s walking through a neighborhood with a local guide, or joining a small group for a shared experience. Traveling solo simply means I choose how and when I connect—and slowing down makes those connections more meaningful.

With time, curiosity deepens. I ask better questions. I listen more closely. I see the world through perspectives different from my own. I try food I’ve never tasted, meet people I would’ve otherwise passed by, and learn things no checklist could ever teach me.

Travel builds confidence, not because it’s always easy, but because it shows you that you can figure things out—even when it’s uncomfortable. It reminds you not to let fear dictate your choices, and that curiosity is often a better guide. Travel is lifelong learning in motion, each street, conversation, and wrong turn offering something new.

After the pandemic, slow solo travel became essential for me. It gave me space to breathe, reflect, and move through the world at my own rhythm. It reminded me why solo travel matters—not because it’s daring or brave, but because it creates room for awareness, empathy, and self-discovery.

If you’ve never traveled solo, I hope you try it at least once. Not to prove anything, but to experience what it feels like to be fully present—with a place, and with yourself.

Travel slowly. Travel intentionally. Stay curious.

Go have an adventure.

I arrived in October 2023 on a girls’ trip with college friends. We had a few days together—laughing, wandering, and doing the very unserious things that feel right with people who know you well. Highlights included taking edibles and wandering the Musée d’Orsay, a quick trip to Bordeaux, where the wine tasted impossibly good, eating falafel and taking photos near the Eiffel Tower, and being turned away from multiple restaurants because we didn’t have reservations. The French take dinner very seriously.

It also rained. A lot.

We welcomed the rare moments of sunshine, but for the most part, the city was overcast, drizzly, and gray. Still beautiful—just quieter, more introspective.

After my friends left, I decided to stay a couple of extra days in Paris on my own. I wanted time to recharge before my next destination. Paris felt like the right place to do that: layered, complicated, iconic, and endlessly photographed. As someone who grew up in a city of millions, I feel most comfortable in cities. I’m especially curious about places that are romanticized to the point of myth—Paris being at the top of that list for many Americans.

I wanted to experience a more lived-in version of the city.

A Different Kind of Paris

That’s when I remembered reading about Paris Greeters—a volunteer program where locals offer free, informal walks through their neighborhoods. No scripts. No itineraries. Just a person sharing the city they love.

I signed up and was matched with Ruth.

We met in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, a vibrant suburb north of Paris known for its massive flea market—Marché aux Puces—its industrial past, and its growing artistic and tech scenes. Ruth has lived there for over three decades. She raised her son there. She’s a grandmother. This neighborhood is not just where she lives—it’s where her life has unfolded.

It was raining that day, and she asked beforehand if I still wanted to go on the walk. I told her yes. The rain wouldn’t stop me.

To this day, it remains the most unique walking tour I’ve ever been on—because it didn’t feel like a tour at all. It felt like we were old friends running errands together.

Walking Through Saint-Ouen

We spent time at a preschool. Walked through the flea market. We stopped for savory crêpes, and I asked for extra hot sauce on mine. We visited a charity shop where people donate gently used items—Ruth did a little shopping. She showed me the newer part of the neighborhood, which was built for tech companies. Glass buildings and harsh lines rising beside worn cobblestones and brick—like a Microsoft campus dropped into history.

The contrast was striking. Old and new. Community and capital. Continuity and change.

We talked about life. About retirement. About travel. Ruth told me she once backpacked through Australia and Asia. She encouraged my solo travels wholeheartedly. When I asked why she volunteers as a Greeter, she said it allows her to stay connected to travelers. She doesn’t travel much anymore, but she loves the connections that travel creates.

At one point, we wandered into a community garden where community members had turned the soil in preparation for winter. Nearby were flowers that had been pulled up, roots still intact. Suddenly, Ruth pulled out three enormous foldable bags.

“Do you always carry these?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “You never know when you’ll need them.”

She started gathering the flowers. I paused and asked, “Are we allowed to take these?”

She smiled and said, “Why not?”

So I helped.

It felt domestic. Ordinary. Perfect.

She walked me past the area where the Olympic athlete village was being built near the university—spaces that would later become student housing after the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Another layer of change. Another reminder that cities are always becoming something else.

Paris, But Real

When we finally said goodbye at the bus stop that would take me back to Montmartre, I asked if we could take a photo together. She agreed and then told me she’d name one of the flowers after me.

“I hope you have many adventures,” she said. “Go live your life.”

Spending those few hours with Ruth was one of the most meaningful travel experiences I’ve had in a long time. It allowed me to meet Paris where it actually is—messy, evolving, human. To witness gentrification, community building, memory, and care. Not the algorithm’s version of Paris, but a lived-in one.

It reminded me why I travel the way I do: not to consume a place, but to connect with it. To listen. To walk alongside someone who calls it home.

Paris will always be iconic. But Paris, through Ruth, felt real.

My first international trip was to Taiwan when I was three years old. I have no memory of it, but I know we went to visit my paternal grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins. There are photos from that trip that I love—mostly because of my very serious bob haircut. How cute was I?

The first trip I actually remember came soon after: Hong Kong. I remember picking out outfits specifically for the trip, laying everything out, and zipping suitcases with intention. I remember the long flights, the excitement of being somewhere new, and the very real pain of my ears popping midair.

Growing up, every spring break and summer break meant movement. San Francisco. Mexico City. Vancouver. Las Vegas. New York City. Orlando. Houston. San Diego. And more. Visiting new places, trying unfamiliar foods, hearing a different language, and experiencing different ways of life wasn’t a special occasion—it was normal. Travel was simply part of how we lived.

As an adult, that rhythm continued.

As a solo traveler, I’ve wandered through Cuba, Turkey, Cambodia, Japan, Portugal, and Morocco. Traveling alone taught me how to be comfortable with myself, how to trust my instincts, and how deeply I value connection—even fleeting ones. Some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve had while traveling came from conversations that unfolded naturally, across language barriers or while simply asking for directions.

When Travel Was Taken Away

I didn’t fully realize how essential travel was to me until the pandemic forced me to stop.

Stillness and isolation made something very clear: movement is how I process life. When travel was taken away, I felt disconnected—from curiosity, from joy, from myself. So when the world began to open again, I didn’t ease back in. I leapt.

In 2022, my first post-pandemic trip was two months in Portugal and Spain. It was refreshing, grounding, and honestly life-changing. I felt reborn. That trip reminded me that travel isn’t an escape for me—it’s a return.

Over the last few years, travel has become a much bigger priority in my life. I now spend a few months each year moving through different places, taking intentional breaks from work. I rest. I re-center. I reflect on what I want out of life in that season. Travel gives me the space to listen to myself more clearly.

Why I Started This Substack

I started this Substack because I wanted a place to slow these moments down. Social media moves fast; the parts of travel that matter most don’t. They happen in conversations, shared meals, quiet mornings, missed turns, and cultural nuances that stay with you long after you’ve left.

Here, I’ll write about the people I meet, the food I eat, and the cultures I move through—along with the questions travel brings up when I’m paying attention. Some posts will be reflective, others observational, and some will simply capture a moment that stayed with me.

If you’re here, welcome. I’m glad you found your way here—and I hope these stories make you feel a little more curious about the world, and a little more at home in it too.