Burma, A World Apart, A Short Plane Ride Away

The world is shrinking, the bounds of the unknown far off places have become not to distant neighbors. Everything is changing. After this month, after graduation, this life I know looks much like a large white space. Bright, unknown, promising.

I flew across the Atlantic again. Twenty-four hours door to door, a third of the way around the world, like it was nothing. Twenty-four hours of relative silence, aside from the hum of the plane engine and the bustling shuffles of travelers headed off to their far corners of the world. The airport is still one of my favorite places, I like to imagine where my fellow travelers are heading. Are they going home like I am? Off on a grand adventure? Business? Are they excited? Happy? Sad? Whatever they are doing, we all share those brief moments on the way to our respective gates, we are all leaving, or coming home. The outside world doesn’t exist here. I can think. And marvel at how small the world is now. How a decade ago even Europe seemed a world away. But that mystery couldn’t stay. When you hop on a plane and travel to the other side of the world, LAX-Kathmandu, Seattle-Tanzania, in just over a day, it’s hard to imagine these places are all that far. To think, I could go to the airport now and wake up in Mongolia, or Australia, or…anywhere really.  Minus, I suppose, the cost of doing so. But still, everything just feels so small. I can sit in this little, metallic tube screaming through the sky and land on the other side of the earth. It’s marvelous. Continue reading →