The whole point of this blog is to reveal that we all sometimes feel a little lost or confused about what comes next in life. This feeling is normal and it can bombard you at any point in time. It strikes everyone at different points in time and is very likely a feeling that will never fully subside. We’ll always be trying to figure out who we are. We’ll always wonder what’s next. Life is an endless search to an ever evolving list of complicated questions that fill up our head. We believe that while adventure may not answer our questions, for many people it seems to ease the anxiety that tends to accompany them. We sat down with world traveler and teacher, Katie Spencer, to discuss how travel has impacted her life.
Lindsey: Tell us about yourself.
Katie: Well, I’m like, an expert at being lost. As far as traveling, I’ve traveled, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert. Let’s see… I grew up in Jonesboro and went to school here. I married and went to Spain to teach English for a year. That was my fist experience with travel, because it was so cheap to travel there. My husband, now ex-husband had gone with me. We were married seven years. We took many trips together. I got divorced last year. I’ve continued traveling. And I guess that’s me…
Lindsey: Why do you think you love to travel? What draws you to other destinations?
Katie: I’m so curious. I feel so… I guess it’s a passion for discovering things. I’ve wondered that, like why do I love to travel? Sometimes I go somewhere and I don’t have any idea what I’m gonna do when I get there. And I don’t do anything special, either, but my favorite thing to do is just to walk around and not really know what I’m gonna do.
Lindsey: What’s your favorite memory, or maybe wildest tale?
Katie: My favorite trip that I went on… when I went to Spain, during Semana Santa, which is Holy Week… It’s kind of like Easter and Spring Break, they do it at the same time so they take the whole week off. So me and my ex went to Tuscany. We thought we would be able to just go where we wanted to go and just stay in hostels. So we made no reservations except for a scooter. So we get there and just take off with no idea where we’re going. We had nothing but a GPS.
We just went all over the place and then we found out there’s not really hostels in Tuscany. There’s just nice bed and breakfasts, vineyards… it’s gorgeous. Some of things that we stumbled upon were these natural hot springs that were light blue. The minerals had collected so the water was inside these white, rock-like formations. We passed another place that was a vineyard doing research about playing Mozart for the grapes to see if the wine would taste better… so we toured that place.
The mishap, the craziest mishap was on this trip. We were getting to the end of the trip, we get our GPS, which has been our lifeline because we have no reservations, no nothing… and we’re packing up; we need to get from Florence to Pisa so we can turn in the scooter, and then get on the plane that same day. It’s pouring down rain, and it’s Easter, so that was pretty interesting because everyone was out and about. We go to put in our destination in the GPS and we drop it in a puddle… And it just didn’t work. We’re lost.
So we figure we’ll just go to a gas station and get a map, and gas, ’cause we were almost out. The gas stations were all closed, because it’s Easter. We had no idea how to get back. So we just started driving. Then it started hailing on us. We pulled off to this, I don’t really know what it was, but we had to get out of the hail. Well, there was a big party going on. We were not dressed to be at a nice party. We were not invited to this party. So we’re just sneaking around the hallways… We eventually hopped back on the road and started seeing signs for Pisa.
Jackson: Where’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been?
Katie: Probably, the place that just mesmerized me and took my breath away… probably the Grand Canyon. Yosemite, too, was incredible.
Lindsey: What do you think makes a landscape beautiful? What is it that takes your breath away?
Katie: Hmm… probably how different it is from everything else that you see everyday… but, I don’t know, if you live there I’m sure you wake up and still think it’s beautiful. But the experience of seeing it for the first time and realizing you need to take it in probably amplifies it.
Lindsey: So, you’re a teacher. Tell us a little bit about what you do.
Katie: Yeah! I teach first through sixth grade Spanish at a school called International Studies. I teach every class for forty minutes each week. It’s a lot of fun because I get to teach Spanish, but I get to teach cultural lessons too. I get to show them the world is a little bigger than they think.
Lindsey: What’s rewarding about that?
Katie: Honestly, I feel so great to get to love children that I think need it. They need to just have fun. When we come in Spanish my main goal is to get them to enjoy it. I can’t teach a foreign language in forty minutes a week. Anyone that’s tried to learn another language knows you have to eat, sleep, and breathe it; it has to be a very strong goal for you. My real goal is to get them to enjoy it because I think if they enjoy it, they will continue to learn on their own. It’s very rewarding to me when they stop me in the hall and say, “We have Spanish today! I can’t wait!” That makes me so happy.
Lindsey: What’s challenging about teaching?
Katie: Oh gosh… dealing with little children that are sitting down all day long. They come in and you say, oh, we’re gonna play a game, but you still have to order… I absolutely hate exercising control over other people. It is not a strength of mine. As a teacher, you don’t have a choice: you have to exercise control.
Jackson: What do you have going on in your life right now?
Katie: I’ve been in a transition period, pretty much, which has been me making excuses to not have anything figured out… For so long I felt like I did have things figured out. I knew exactly what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I knew what I wanted. My plans were disrupted because of the divorce. Now a lot is changing.
Lindsey: You said you’re going through this transition period and that brings us back to the concept of the blog. Our whole life is a transition period. I think, especially with social media, we become convinced that other people have it together. I think that’s just not true. But that’s okay because a lot of the fun is in the transition periods! So what would you tell someone who is going through a transition period and maybe they aren’t as optimistic about that being a good thing. Perhaps they’re depressed, scared, confused, lost or any of those more negative emotions; what would be your advice or encouragement for them?
Katie: Oh gosh, I have so many things to say about that. First of all, anytime you’re making any sort of huge life change, nobody is telling you if it’s the right decision or not. No one’s going to tell you. God’s not going to tell you. Your friends aren’t going to tell you. People have opinions, but no one is going to tell you the correct answer. When you’re going through that, you have to rely on what you know and figure out what’s best for yourself. And I think sometimes people aren’t very good at knowing what’s best for them because maybe they haven’t been doing that their whole lives. We’re taught to care for other people and take care of other people. So, when you’re put in the position to take care of yourself, it makes you feel lost…
Someone sent me a quote that said, “What is meant for you shall not pass you.” I think about that a lot. It gave me hope because it made me realize that I can’t make the wrong decision. What is meant for me shall not pass me. It doesn’t mean there’s a fate or a destiny, or that I’m definitely headed in a specific direction and have no control over it… it just means that whatever decision I make, I’ll make the best of it. And I’ll look back at my life and know that was what was supposed to be. I’ll be glad that everything happened because it made me who I am. I guess that’s what I’d say.
