Going into this trip, over and over we were told to be flexible. Honestly, I did not know how much that would be applicable to us when most of the time we learned what we were doing each day the night before. I kept thinking to myself, how can we be flexible with a minimal starting point? Boy was I wrong. Even with set in stone destinations, travel plans, reservations, and seemingly every detail organized, things can go wrong or just slightly differently than planned.
In the US, society greatly encourages us to be in a rush, have our days planned out, be productive from sun up to sun down, and take little time to ourselves. Since we lead our lives based on our calendars, we have not grown up learning to be flexible, living in the moment, and not thinking about the next thing. When our schedule is inevitably interrupted, we almost always think of it as a negative thing. Not all societies are this way.
When we were venturing from lunch to the chocolate factory, we had an issue where we weren’t able to be on the bus for about two hours. We were going to miss our reservation and be stuck in another city for a period of time. At first we were all disappointed by this because studying chocolate is what we came here to do and what we were expecting to do next. This unexpected delay allowed us all to exist in the moment and explore a new place with no game plan.
When we were walking around looking in shops, trying street food, exploring churches and some other things in the town, we had never laughed harder. The unexpected free time allowed us to relax and really appreciate our surroundings. We talked to more locals, went in more buildings, tried more foods, etc. and ultimately were able to form a lot more memories. We gained more cultural knowledge and grew closer together as we were just existing, talking, and bouncing ideas off of each other.
This idea of just going with the flow is something that we have been able to see with the locals a lot. Our guide, Diana has been great about laughing things off and just going with what works the best. I think we all have a lot to learn about enjoying the present and forming memories rather than planning the next thing. I think the cultural differences here will impact us all positively.
