My First Time Travelling Solo
In 2013, I was convinced to participate in a study abroad program at the University of Toronto, where I had been studying Soviet art and culture, the Russian language, and semiotics. At the time, I was eager to travel but nervous about travelling alone. My previous times abroad were isolated to trips with family to the Netherlands. The first occasion was to celebrate the shared birthday of my great-grandmother and me, with my mom and Oma A (my mom’s mom). A decade later, I travelled there with my Dutch grandparents, Oma A and Pake H, and again with them around age 14. I didn’t feel inclined to travel by the time I got to college. I was more interested in completing my degree and trying to establish myself in a big city.
After finishing a seminar course in semiotics at UofT, I reevaluated my interests. This was, in part, prompted by the professor of the course. She encouraged me to continue my studies in semiotics and where else but at the University of Tartu, home to one of two of the first established departments of semiotics in the world. On route, I stopped in Rome, Italy, for three days. This was my time to “catch up” with a change in time zones. From Rome, I flew to Riga, Latvia, where I stayed with a grade-school friend who continues to live there. From Riga, I hopped a bus to Tartu.
Some of the posts that follow come from writing I did during my study abroad at the University of Tartu, in Tartu, Estonia, the places I visited while abroad, and the people I met along the way.* I encourage all students to study abroad. For me, it levelled my sense of self in the world and gave me a greater awareness of people, cultures, and ways of living other to what I grew up in.
The rest of the writing encompass my reflections on being a pedestrian and what it means to me to walk.
*Posts have been updated to reflect the elapsed decade but are otherwise unedited.