4 Huge False Assumptions I Had About International Travel

You don’t know what you don’t know, and I didn’t know these four things before first leaving The States over a decade ago.

I was scared on that first flight. Photo by Alonso Reyes on Unsplash

I remember what it was like. I remember the swirling worry and anxiety before my first big, unplanned, open-ended, international adventure. I flew into Aruba, a small island just above Colombia’s northern coast, without even having a bed booked for that first night.

I leaned into serendipity and started to allow every new day, every new connection made at a hostel or on a bus to dictate the adventure; one domino slowly tapping the next. This is my preferred way to travel, but I didn’t really know that before I left on this first, solo, one-way adventure.

The worries I had before I found my feet and got comfortable approaching a table of strangers at a hostel were very real. I can still feel their weight if I put myself back in the headspace I had during the summer of 2012. However, after traveling and living abroad for the past decade, those fears have been assuaged.

I want to give you a jump start on dispelling these fears before you even board that first flight.

The world is enormous and it can feel rather intimidating to explore it all alone…