Begin at the beginning, as certain king once said, I officially discovered my love for traveling fresh out of high school when thanks to a series of events I was pressed to change the course of action of my rather conservative life. A firm believer of that everything happens for a divine reason, I found myself undertaking a one-year pilot program at the age of 19 in the United States, it was my first solo experience living abroad.
The moment I first flew in a Cessna 152 as a student passenger, I realized that more than becoming a pilot, what I liked the most about flying was the sole—le petit prince like—idea of being able to go anywhere in the world. Like Antoine’s character, I was very much (and still are, only older) a boy on a quest for wisdom trying to understand our kind by experiencing it first-hand.
A year later, I went on to living and traveling around Southeast Asia for about two and half years. My first home was Jogjakarta where I was to study the language and the culture with a dozen of other international students, moreover I moved around the islands of Bali and Sumatra quite often, sometimes just for leisure, others to teach English as a second language to local youngsters.
A Self-Discovery Journey
I consider this period of my life the time I discovered everything I was capable of; within those two years I feel I experienced so much growth that even today I sometimes revisit passages in my head to remind myself of lessons learned there.
If the States felt like home in more ways than one would expect, Southeast Asia felt like planets away. Indonesia for example, the archipelago nation where I visited the most towns in that region is a fruit punch of cultures and peoples, you won’t find an island that is like the other, with their uniqueness often demanding the visitor to readapt to each place.
On the other hand, Europe is a wholly different story. Discovering sometimes a new way of doing something and adopting it; others I catch on similarities with life at home, making me want to stay.
As common as it is to lose one’s notion of time and memories as we age, I have long decided to rescue some of it, either through written words or pictures, luckily inspiring you in the process, dear reader, to go out of your way and meet the foxes and fall in love with roses.
Arash Bernal Ponce Aguilera
For Avenue B