Since I plan on posting a good amount about travel, I thought I would give you a little background on how the travel bug first bit me, and then I realized that moment in time needed some context as well. One thing led to another and I was writing a brief history of my life up until about the age of 16… So here it goes!

My love of travel didn’t just sprout in 2021 after pandemic restrictions began to lift. My fascination with other countries and cultures started from a pretty young age. I am half Greek via Brazil and the other half is a mixture of German and British (and a little redneck). When I say half Greek via Brazil, I mean that my dad was Greek, and he and his siblings were all born in Brazil and grew up there until their early twenties. How is that? Well, my grandfather (Papou) moved to Brazil during a time when many Greeks were leaving the country to find work and send money home. He ended up in Brazil and from what I have gathered, he was pen pals with my grandma (Yia Yia) before they met and eventually got married. I am sure there is more to this, but on a visit back home to Greece, he and my Yia Yia met and she ended up getting pregnant. Yia Yia then moved to Brazil where she and my Papou got married. You can just barely see the baby bump in the wedding photo.

I was born in Portland, Oregon and I spent the first twelve years of my life there. This is where the Greek side of my family lives and I spent a lot of time growing up in a trilingual household. My dad’s side of the family speaks to each other in a combination of Portuguese, Greek, and English. All of us kids learned Greek from a young age because of our Yia Yia. Yia Yia was the primary caretaker for myself, my brother, and my cousins. Our parents all worked a lot and we basically lived at our Yia Yia’s house. Yia Yia was also stubborn, and in the 40 years she lived in the states she never learned English so we all learned enough Greek to be able speak with her. It was especially important to be able to tell her we were in fact NOT hungry when she was still trying to feed us.

Growing up, there was always some kind of music playing whether it be American, Greek, or Brazilian, and my Yia Yia loved watching her Greek soap operas when we finally got her satellite TV with the Greek channels. I grew up going to a Greek Orthodox Church, Greek school, and doing Greek Folk dancing so I was steeped in a lot of non-American culture from a young age. This definitely made me curious about other parts of the world. I think many of us who grow up as the children of immigrants hope to go back and see the country their families are from and connect with our heritage. I’ve done Greece and hope to go again, but I have got to get to Brazil!

In 1999 my dad passed away after a fight with pancreatic cancer. He was goofy, loved music, a great cook, and a tech nerd. All things that I can proudly use to describe myself now. At the time of his passing, I was 9 years old and it has only been recently that I finally feel at peace with this death (thank you therapy). I’ll definitely share more about him in the future, but as you could imagine it changed the trajectory of my family’s life quite a bit.

After a couple years of being a single parent, my mom decided she wanted to be closer to her side of the family in rural eastern Oregon. My mom had very valid reasons for this: changing careers to be home more often, my grandparents and great grandparents would be around to help raise my brother and I, and she wanted to make sure my brother and I had a well rounded upbringing to instill a little city boy and little country boy in both of us. My dad also loved it in little Baker City, Oregon and I suspect we still would have ended up living out there at some point had he not passed.

All those reasons were fine and dandy and something I can appreciate as an adult, but at the time, selfish pre-teen me was DEVASTATED to be leaving Portland for so many reasons. I was going to miss my family and my community at the Greek church. It also meant no more Greek folk dance which was one of my greatest joys at the time. I was also hitting that pubescent phase where boys and girls were starting to date, and the strong inkling I had had from a very young age that I was not quite like the rest of the other kids at school was starting to make a little more sense. I’m gay! What was a kid like me going to do in a place like Baker City, Oregon? It is a small town of less than 10,000 people and the nearest neighboring towns were at least a solid forty-five minute drive through livestock grazing pastures and potato fields.

Let me tell you, it was pretty miserable at times, but the highlight of the first few months was having a group of high school aged foreign exchange students from the Rotary International program come to my 6th Grade class. They spent time with us so they could see what school was like in the US and we got to learn a bit about their countries as well.  All the while, a little idea was starting to brew in my head, “this is how I get the hell out of here!”

A couple years later in middle school, another group of exchange students through the Rotary program visited again. This time, I was able to volunteer to be paired with one of them for the whole day. Sadly, I don’t remember his name, but he was a super nice guy from Australia. It really would have been helpful to keep in touch and have a contact on my recent trip to Sydney… Anyways, this experience rekindled that little spark of hope I had a couple years earlier. When the time came to apply during my sophomore year in high school, I leapt at the opportunity to put in an application and was lucky to be chosen to go on an exchange program of my own.

The way that the Rotary program worked, you didn’t actually get to pick the country you wanted to go to. I had to go through a series of interviews and orientation weekends where you got to meet other students from your Rotary district who would also be going on exchange. You also met current exchange students from other countries. The Rotary leadership spent time at these orientations observing us all and getting to know us so they could decide which countries we might fit in best. During the first orientation weekend, there was a country fair where you could learn about each of the possible countries, ice breakers, and all sorts of different sessions to help prepare you for living abroad for a year. After all these sessions you were asked to make list of your top 5 countries. I don’t remember the exact countries or order, but I think mine was something like:

1. Japan

2. Germany

3. Brazil

4. Russia

5. Italy

Sadly, Greece was not an option through Rotary or I would have put that as #1! I am pretty sure that I was one of the only people (if not the only person…) who put Russia on their list which kind of sealed my fate. There was also the possibility that you would not get one of your top 5 picks at all.

I had always found Russian culture fascinating. Religiously, they shared similarities with the Greek Orthodox Church and their alphabet was based on and somewhat similar to Greek. I think my young mind felt some sort of cultural kinship between Greek and Russian culture that made me curious. Anytime it was a focus in social studies or history class, I was always fascinated when learning about Russia, the Tsars, the Revolution, Communism, the collapse of the USSR, and the rebuilding of Russia. Well… As I should have known, Russia was indeed where I was selected to go.

How ironic that young gay me wanted to get away from my tiny small-minded town and then I end up going to a country that is heavily cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights. During the time I was living there (2006/2007) it was not quite as bad as it is now, but even prior to the legislation that was passed in Russia in the 2010s, it was still not safe to be gay in Russia. At the time I went, I was about 16 and I had only just recently come out of the closet to a handful of friends, my little brother, and my mom. I figured I had been in the closet for the last 15 years, what’s another year?

I have a whole date book that I kept to help me remember the year I spent there. I think it’s time to revisit that book and write about my time there. Mostly for myself to better remember, but also to share with you all. Russia gets a bad wrap because of their government and political leadership, but Russians are some of the most kind, generous, and genuine people I have had the privilege to spend time with.

I really owe a lot to my local Rotary Club and Rotary International for giving me the gift of experiencing such a different part of the world at such a young age. It has taught me to keep my mind open to new and different ideas. To always step back and try to see things from a grander perspective. Most of all, it made me even more curious about the rest of the world and has kept me traveling whenever I can.

I’m so excited to revisit, relive, and retell the stories of all my travels and everything in-between.