I've been having a pretty great week enjoying the beautiful beaches and scenery that Sardinia has to offer but as my time in Sardinia is beginning to come to a close I have begun to think more about how beneficial traveling here has been for me. Over the last few years I've fantasized about what it would be like to travel to Europe one day, hoping that one day I'd finally have the chance to take the much romanticized trip across the pond. I didn't really care where I'd go, I was just dying to experience a taste of European culture. Thankfully the opportunity for me to do this program arose and I was able to get my first glimpse of Europe through one of the most unique lenses possible.
It has been an invaluable experience to be thrown into a land in which I can barley even form a sentence in its native language. Though admittedly this no one's fault but my own, this language barrier has allowed me to interact in this environment in a way that feels totally genuine and authentic to me in a strange way. It makes me feel like I am experiencing an entirely different form of traveling than I ever have before. It's a bit hard to explain but it feels like I am taking in the purest possible form of the Sanitarian experience, almost as if I am a fly on the wall. This is something I anticipated as being frustrating and yet here I am talking about how much it has added to my experience. This entire trip has really changed what traveling means and feels like to me and I cannot wait to see how this attitude fares in other places I will visit around the world in my lifetime. Thankfully, I just finished booking all of the transportation logistics of my solo backpacking trip after the concision of this program. Sad to start thinking about leaving Sardinia but I'm excited for the next leg of my European journey. More reflective thoughts in blog posts to come.
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