culture & community relationships & love sisterhood

When Things Aren’t What You Expected (Because They’re So Much More)

by JoAnna — August 11, 2014

The more I travel the more my boundaries are pushed and the smaller the world becomes. Despite my (sometimes) heart stopping discomfort of flying I still force myself, from time to time, to get on a long haul flight or endure a series of insomnia inducing night flights in order to immerse myself in cultures far removed from my own. I do it to go to regions, countries, remote townships and bear witness to the sort of deep history that allow all those voices from the ages to resonate through the spongy marrow of my bones, where they bounce and echo. Shake, rattle and roll; from the bottom of my heels to the crown of my head.

Mother Armenia. Blessed she be.

Mother Armenia. Blessed she be.

Yerevan This post is going to be one of my shorter ones (we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief) since I’m still on the road and rather adverse to spending my time in front of a computer screen. After travelling for ten days in the Caucasus I am back in the country that is my second home (oh #Belgium, how I love her) to catch up on sleep, catch up with friends and stuff my face with embarrassing amounts of fries, mussels, sparkling wine and chocolate because I am, after all, the sort of woman who will eat until she has a stomach ache…or until she has sold her shirt for a bottle of Crémant d’Alsace.

The Greek-inspired temple of Garni. Centuries and centuries and...centuries old.

The Greek-inspired temple of Garni. Centuries and centuries and…centuries old.

Anyhow, it wouldn’t work to start delving into the thoughts careening through my mind since my journey east unearthed a Pandora’s Box of emotions and ideas I have yet to properly organize. They will require time to take shape. They need to steep and gather form. They are the sort of notions that come from a place deep within and are covered with stardust and slimy residue and ask, demand really, to be pondered. Ruminated over. Meditated upon.

The hills are alive. Truly.

The hills are alive. Truly.

So with that cryptic tiding I will slip off into a, now rainy, Bruxellois afternoon with the memory of things beyond my reach tickling the edge of my mind and the beautiful reminder that some places are never what you expected because they are, wonderfully, so much more.   I’m forever amazed how some places are not at all what you expected because they’re so much more.

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