10 January 2017
I met a few someones today. It's crazy because I thought one of them was someone I met yesterday. To be fair, I took a nap around lunch time so it threw off my internal clock.
Someone I met today was at a small specialty shop. Kayte and I were looking around admiring their outdoors themed ware. While I was trying on different sunglasses, the owner overhead me talking about putting glacier water into a tiny bottle to take home. This ended up sparking a conversation.
"Glacier water?"
"Yeah! I'm going on vacation to Iceland and I want to bring a glacier back so I kind of want a small bottle to put it in."
"Why Iceland?"
"I've always thought it was interesting. It's beautiful sure, but it has a really fascinating history."
"You know they're the first people to elect women?"
"I didn't know that. They've always done a good job of self governance. I'm reading the The History of Iceland right now, and even when Iceland was considered a tax land of Norway and was connected to Denmark, they've always been very autonomous."
"It's too bad we couldn't do that here, or that Hillary [Clinton] couldn't use that as an example."
We shared a laugh and got to talking. The fellow I met was the first guy to bring the Roxy brand here, and is fairly involved in the surfing community because of his relatives. He wore the sun well on his own skin. This man shared with me that he really believes in investing in local businesses, but it's really very expensive. However, he does actively try to share smaller brands with better quality products. He didn't like the way bigger brands did it because it squeezed smaller businesses out which he thought was "too bad."
"I hope you go to Iceland and learn a lot. That's really the point of traveling you know?"
"I hope so. I'm very excited to talk to new people and learn about their mythology and it's going to be so much fun."
"So what's your omiyage? What are you going to bring to them?"
He was showing us some of the product while Kayte humblebragged that I'm a painter. To be fair, there was a really cute miniature watercolor set that we had been looking at with a cute painting and notebook nearby. I ended up showing him a painting I recently made, and he shared that I should paint while of there. My ever supportive best friend agreed. Of course. (She's really one of the best people I know).
"Oh, why don't you paint here and share it with them!"
"You know, that's not a bad idea."
It's always so interesting to see what people take away from traveling. People experience it differently, and do it for different reasons.
Someone else I met today gets a small blurb because he's traveling and studying psychology all over the world. He had been in Bangkok and Beijing most recently. In our small interaction, he shared he was an introvert and was studying psychology to better understand people around him. When I asked him about what he wanted to focus on, and he said he didn't really know... In fact, that was the only thing he was sure about was that he was trying to find people's motivations and what makes them tick in their decision making... As well as how consistent they are in that decision-making. Also interesting was how he referred to his funding for travel, "Research slush fund." Who calls their grants that? Definitely connotes something different from the term "grant" or "scholarship."
The one thing I was sure about with both of these people enjoyed traveling and both of them enjoyed meeting people for slightly different reasons. The man I had met at the shop shared a parting lamentation:
You call a paradise
Kiss it goodbye