Being Home and Being Reflective

   Throughout my entire trip, I kept remembering a particular piece of advice President Tori Haring-Smith gave us during our departing Magellan meeting. It was simply to not to forget that you will be in a new place, by yourself, and the Magellan project is just as much about finding your own way, solving the inevitable problems that will appear throughout the project, and growing as a person, as it is about conducting the research you set out to examine. That advice stuck with me as I made my first trip overseas, the very first member of my family to go to a foreign country. While some might view the lack of my family’s experience abroad as a detriment, since they were unable to give me any advice about airports or foreign countries in general, whereas I saw it as a great opportunity to explore a world my parents knew nothing of and bring them back glimpses of life outside the ever consuming bubble of the United States.

            The last flight I went on was a two hour affair from Pittsburgh to Orlando when I was nine
years old. I required no thought, I simply followed my mother from the time I walked into the airport to the moment we left the airport in a complimentary shuttle headed for Disney World. By the time I went to the airport for my first of three flights to arrive at my destination, I had completely forgotten what our airport looked like or where to go. Lucky for me, airports are one of the few places that are painstakingly labeled at every turn. I could not begin to fathom the difference between my first flight of two hours with mom, to the twenty-plus hours of travel I was about to undertake alone. I kept thinking to myself that I was going to be one of those travel horror story statistics where one flight would be delayed for a few hours, and then my connecting flight would leave without me, and then I would be stuck in the airport for days until the next flight came. With God’s grace, or the FAA actually doing their job, or whomever, luckily every single flight on the way there went smoothly, on time, and did wonders to calm my nerves. I left late Sunday and I arrive in Malta at 4pm on Monday. I felt like half my job was already done: just getting to my country in one piece.

            Now I finally had the chance to set out and explore the vast cultural and architectural beauty all stuffed into such a tiny island (after being on a plane for twenty-some hours, I feel it is appropriate to compare the vast history of the island to its size to the same effect as airlines crowding people in coach like sardines). After quite the nap after reaching my hostel, which also took more effort than I would have thought, I set out to explore Valletta’s skyline from Sliema’s waterfront, just across the bay. Seeing a fortified city in person is something a picture simply cannot describe. I have always been fascinated by Malta, the last stand of Christian Europe against Ottoman invaders, and therefore I have probably seen hundreds of photos of Fort St. Elmo, Fort St. Michael, and Fort St. Angelo, but to seem them in person, to view them from the Grand Harbor as their Ottoman adversaries must have seen them, it was a breathtaking experience. The realism and awe of seeing the towering walls of Fort St. Elmo (the only fort to fall to the Ottomans) from the low-sailing traditional Maltese fishing boat made the bastion look invincible. The amount of force the Ottomans expended to capture that fortress cost them victory, their commander, and half of their elite troops, and seeing the star fort’s imposing stature helped me to understand those losses were conservative.

            About a week later after exploring most of the coastline of Valletta and walking up and down its main street called Triq ir-Repubblika (Republic Street in English) and visiting every little store and exploring the baroque and stunning St. Johns Co-Cathedral, I carried on my fascination with the Knights of St. John. Normally the venue I went to, the Grand Master’s Palace Armory, allows visitors to see one of the greatest collections of medieval to 18^th century bladed weapons, cannons, armor, and early firearms, as well as a few state rooms used by their modern government. Unfortunately, the day I went coincided with a government event that obviously overshadowed its use as a tourist trap. After watching a tourist nearly weep at the attendant for being unable to see the state rooms, I eagerly walked up to the man and stopped him in mid-apologetic speech, and proudly beamed that I had only truly visited for the armory anyways. Whether the man was particularly nice, or whether he was just happy to have one customer who did not meet his new with a look of sudden depression, I found out an important lesson that day: be nice to people and they will accept an American college’s ID for a student discount. I felt proud of myself that day because in days past when I had decided to look for something specific, I would often get sidetracked and end up on the opposite side of town pursuing another place of interest on my list. That day, I took the ferry to Valletta, told myself where I was going, and only past the place three times before my determination finally let me down an alley to find the armory’s entrance. For my resolve, I was rewarded with one of the best displays of weapons and armor I have ever seen. Now for most people, it might be interesting, worth a few pictures, move on to the next pointy metal thing, and tell your neighbors that you saw a cool sword. For me though, nothing was more interesting to me. As a younger child, I made my parents buy me these huge picture books of historic weapons that chronicled where they originated from, whose army used them, and the best ways they were used to kill their enemies. I even had wooden swords that I would play with constantly.  I probably sound insane, but there is a certain pride, and a great smile comes across my face, when I can see a weapon in a case from across the room and say “oh, that’s a rapier” or “I bet that’s a partisan”. The amount of times I was able to look at weapon and tell myself whether it is a glaive, a halberd, a ranseur or a Bec de corbin, not only made me proud of a seemingly useless knowledge I had obtained but validated my interest in the Knights of St. John and my fascination with the days of warfare before modern firearms.

            In between my larger tasks I mostly walked around Sliema and Valletta, which was surprisingly enjoyable considering I hardly walk around my own neighborhood, let alone a completely foreign place. My impression was that the Maltese people tended to keep to themselves but if approached, where extremely friendly and were very fluent in heavily-accented English. If I were to pick out the most defining or the event the made me grow as a person during the trip, it was simply living in the hostel. I am not an only child, but I had never shared a room with a single person before my first year of college. Yet, now I was being promoted (or demoted) from coexisting peacefully with one person to peacefully cohabiting with five different people from different backgrounds, cultures, and accents (amazingly everyone shared the common language of English during my time there). I feel like I kept to myself for a few days too many. I became friends with a fellow American from Virginia who was there for a wedding, and from there I began to talk to the people streaming in and out my dorm, the Red Room. I eventually became friendly with girls from Poland, mediated disputes between my French bunkmate and that same American, went to food festivals with a German woman, took a late night walk with a girl from Poland and talked about each other’s heritage, and my very last night there was spent talking to ten people from nine different countries all sharing conversation, music, political viewpoints on the politics of the EU and of the United States. It was liberating to finally forego my initial shyness, and in turn I was rewarded with interesting people that I will never forget. That was the journey I believe President Tori Haring-Smith was referencing, and it is one of many things I can thank the Magellan Program for, for helping me realize that I can be more.