lowestoft_fourth-of-july-with-post-box_jul-09.jpgIf I ever doubted it before, I now believe it to my core: travel is about more than adventures and sightseeing. Travel expands our understanding of the world beyond our borders . . . and our understanding of our world back home. Twenty years ago this month—the summer of 1989—I spent twenty-eight days travelling throughout Russia, which was in its last days as the Soviet Union. World events being what they were, my parents still agreed to let their 18-year-old daughter get on a plane bound for the USSR. Now that I’m a mom, I realize how brave they must have been to do that. I imagine the only reason they agreed to let me go was because I’d be with a 30-person youth group sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Still, they get big points for letting me have that adventure.

Now here I am with my little boys in a foreign country, in the last days of our year-long adventure in Lowestoft, England. The situation is not even comparable in terms of fear—not because the world’s state of affairs is any more pleasant, but because of our location. Lowestoft is hardly stewing a revolution that will up-end an entire political system and philosophy. That said, sometimes I do still fear being Americans abroad, especially when we travel on trains and planes beyond the UK. For all kinds of reasons, some people outside America’s borders don’t like Americans. I’ve been warned at various times not to flaunt our nationality, not to make us targets for those who would act on their anger. But the thing is, it’s hard to hide my boys. lowestoft_great-yarmouth-park_jan-09.jpgOut-going and vocally spirited four-year-old triplets, two identical and the other nearly so… well, people tend to notice us. I’ve tried to downplay our nationality (for example, the only time I berobed them in red-white-and-blue was for our Fourth of July celebrations) but I’ve stopped short of trying to put my family in a bubble. What kind of life would that be? We wouldn’t be here on this UK adventure at all if my husband and I took that approach. And what amazing things we would’ve missed then.

Take America’s historic 2009 presidential election, and the spirited primary season that preceded it. We were abroad for much of that, and I’ll tell you, it was an amazing experience to be reading the election news on the Internet, feeling like I was back at home for those few minutes I read, and then to walk out my door to British people asking me, “Hey, what do you think of Obama?” People in another country were as riveted by our elections as I was! It was eye-opening. I mean, I’d always been aware of world interest in our presidency in an abstract way, but now I was seeing it first hand. Were these folks who were questioning me as interested in previous presidential elections? I wonder. Certainly 2009’s presidential election was a U.S. election like no other, regardless of one’s choice of candidate or even one’s locale on the globe, and to experience it from beyond our borders, out in a world with people who had some very strong opinions about its outcome for reasons often quite different from America’s reasons, well, I consider that a true privilege. The thing is, all they could do was talk about it. I could act. I’d had our ballots sent to our England address, and my husband and I voted and mailed them back in plenty of time. No way would I have missed this election.

And now, after having had this ‘global’ election experience, I am once again reading news on the Internet about a presidential election—Iran’s. And the outcome is far more gorey.  Comparing the two elections through the filter of my new world view, I understand in a far deeper way just how lucky I am to be an American, a citizen in a land where I can have my say and not worry that I’ll be gunned down because of it.