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My interest in travel started when I was in elementary school. PBS broadcast a cross-cultural educational program called "Big Blue Marble", which featured segments on how children in other countries lived. I remember gawking at kimono-clad Japanese school kids making silk kites and Dutch youth sporting their traditional wooden shoes and folk costumes. At the end of the program, there was an address to write to be match with a foreign penpal.

How rich! How exotic! Yes, sign me up, please.

Still, it wasn't until 7th grade that I was matched with my first correspondant, a South Korean boy from Seoul. He used to ship me miniature carved statues and photos of his school and apartment complex. Throughout the rest of my school years, I wrote to boys and girls in Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Germany, Austria, England and Australia.

I loved the colorful interesting postage stamps on their aerogrammes, strange blue writing sheets pasted together to form an envelope, which had to be cut "just so" to open properly. I loved the foreign coins they sent in exchange for pennies and nickels, and the postcard pictures of their hometowns. It all seemed so much grander than life in my suburban mid-Atlantic hometown.

Around the age of 11 I made my first border crossing, driving through Customs to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. "How many people are with you? What is the purpose of your visit? Are you carrying any of the following...? When will you be leaving the country?" Once we were approved and finally got IN, I remember thinking Canada felt much bigger and cleaner.

I think that was the point when I realized I would one day be a world traveler.

My penpal writing continued, and I amassed a significant stamp and coin collection. I had long since developed a love of maps, often pored over my collection of National Geographic features, and studied encyclopedia articles about countries near and far. By 11th grade, I was studying both French and Spanish. I believed (and still do) that learning each other's ways, and means of expressing them, was an integral step towards understanding and peace.

When I entered university in 1986, I declared French my major, thinking I might work as a translator in a New York publishing house, or perhaps in some official government capacity. I lived in the International Students' Dorm, fell in love with a Frenchman, learned to appreciate "football" and Brie.

However, I dropped out of college only three months later, disillusioned by "the system" and ill-prepared to live amongst strangers whose ethical codes did not measure up to my own. And although I still cherished my foreign contacts, "real life" got in the way of my traveling dreams for many years to come.

Not until 10 years later, vastly changed, did I have another opportunity to see the world outside. From exploring the rugged wilderness of County Donegal, Ireland at a time in my life when I needed forgiveness and proof of the existance of God, to climbing to the top of a Roman arena in Nimes, France to revel in the accomplishments of a long dead empire; from basking in Florida sun, stupified by heat and humidity, to walking with numb wind-whitened skin on the shore of Dublin Bay...

My travel adventures have barely begun, but they have already made my life richer and fuller. I look forward to continuing this story as the years roll by.

Learn more about this author, Tammy Winand.
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