1. Arriving in London alone, when I was 19. I tore around the city trying to take it all in at once, and getting lost all the time.
2. Seeing ethnic Indians being hassled by the army on night busses in Mexico, while the rest of us were ignored after a brief glance at our passports.
3. Travelling in places where I had fewer rights because of my gender and knowing that while I would be leaving, others have to live under these circumstances.
4. Arriving in India for the first time and braving the streets with both excitement and terror. I was so confused and so excited at the same time. There was a real sense of pushing through those fear barriers.
5. The way wretched beggars who people waved away in disgust or ignored looked at me, when I gave them some bread or fruit.
6. How bad it felt for me when I had no choice but to be shouted at by the police on my way into the Bangkok Hilton and knowing that it was way way worse for the prisoner I was visiting and knowing that he cant just walk away in a few hours like I can.
7. Witnessing expressions of warped morals, such as restrictions on women entering religious sites, when those sites were likely financed in the first place by completely ignoring morals against imposing misery on other human beings.
8. How unfailingly sweet and considerate and generous people were to me in Thailand, as a parent travelling with a little child.
9. Listening to a social worker in a remote part of Kenya talking about his work. It made me feel the harshness of life in Africa. Social work there is not what it is in the European Union.
10. Falling in love with an Australian backpacker I met in London when I was 19, and taking off on a trip around Europe with him.
11. Arriving on mainland Europe for the first time, with my ex, when I was 19 and buying chocolate pastries and coffee for breakfast, while my ex danced around singing tip toe through the tulips in as high pitched a voice as he could manage.
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