Pre-travel Monologues of Far Away Places

Preparing to travel to countries that are drastically different from our home country may trigger both emotions of excitement and anxiety. Everything you know prior to travel is based on what you have heard from peers/your instructors, or read about or seen via some video footage. But even then, that knowledge does not quash all your curiosities. I remember going through a similar experience when I was preparing to come the US for my graduate studies from Uganda almost two decades ago. I was excited about the opportunity to obtain the highly sought after American MBA degree, making American and  'international' friends, the potential opportunity to finally vastly travel within the US to all the cities I had head so much about i.e. LA, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Orlando, etc. For a kid who had spent a large part of my life in rural Uganda, what awaited me was unfathomable.

At the same time, I worried about being able to adjust and manage life in this very sophisticated world I had only garnered from films (movies). I had watched films such as Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America" or the Richard Gere and Julia Roberts "Pretty Woman" (some of you are way too young to even recognize these titles!). I had watched and re-watched many of these films and the anxiety of very simple things like being able to use lifts (elevators), or walk on escalators on the right (not left) side with traffic really scared me. Moreover, even though I had spoken English (American) most of my life, I wondered if I would be able to either be understood or to understand others when they spoke. Since I frequently needed to rewind the video cassette whenever I did not quite understand the dialogue in a film, I figured that not having the opportunity to 'rewind' pieces of a conversation would be stressful. I also had now found out that Americans sometimes had peculiar usages of the English language that I was totally unaccustomed to. In the situation I just referred to, saying 'I beg your pardon' was typical English speak I was accustomed. Later, I would find out that Americans sometimes said 'come again' which made no sense to me. I was worried about being understood obviously because I spoke English differently from most I would encounter (I had always assumed that everyone had an English accent depending on where one learned and used the language during their early years of life. So every time someone remarked "you have an accent, where are you from?" My short answer was always Uganda but I was left wondering if I should have added "you too have an accent" in my response). I also worried about being able to talk in terms of pounds, or miles and gallons since I had used the metric system all my previous life. And then there were American sports, a topic I do not even know where to start since to this day this is an area that I have totally failed to fully comprehend. Football (soccer) was going to be a different game for me, and one that was no longer as important as I had known it to be. The teams, their histories, stats, rules of the game, and the amount of information one had to know seemed overwhelming.

These emotions I think are nothing unusual and are simply a mental process that allows us to embrace as best we can the differences we are about to experience in a travel situation. What are those points of excitement or anxiety about this upcoming trip that you can share here? Are there any that you would be curious about what others think or those that need clarification?