Being an international college student, I have to travel a lot. When I say a lot, I mean too much really. When I'm at college, all I think about is coming home, seeing my parents, and spending time in my bed. When I am at home, all I think about is going back to the independence and freedom college gives me. It is a conundrum.

To get home and to go to college, I have to go through a 16 hr flight. It sounds horrible and exhausting and mind numbing and yes, it is, but it is also peaceful and captivating. It makes me feel like I can fly. These extreme ends of my feelings for traveling conflict every time I get on the plane.

I love airports. I could sit in an airport and explore the whole day if i could. You can figure out a lot about a country through their airports and going through its lines and its shops fascinates me. On the complete other end of the spectrum, I hate airports. They are suffocating and everyone is on a mission to get out of there and that never gives a good vibe to a place. It always smells like exhaustion and something that can only be described as "airport smell."

Traveling itself is a beautiful thing. Going to an unknown area of the world, just armed with yourself and your will, is completely amazing. Every new place a person goes to, they leave a piece of themselves there, or if you would like to think of it in another way, they take a piece of that place there with them forever.

It's like this: I may not remember the exact details of my time in Singapore—I was very young—but I do remember our house there. Sometimes I remember how it felt to come back home with my mother and some groceries and that's what Singapore represents to me. A place is not defined by its landmarks and structural ingenuity but by one's experiences there and the sense of belonging that place gives you.

Many people can sense if they are meant to be in a certain place or not, or if they like that place or not. I never understood that because they are just places and the memories you make there is what defines them for you, not the hunch you get when you walk around and breathe in the air of that place. I never understood it until I felt it myself. Some places just make you feel on edge, uncomfortable, and uneasy. It is nothing about that place in particular of course, but it is about how that place and you would be together. Sometimes it is just incompatibility that you sense.

Sometimes traveling to a new place is completely exhausting, especially when you just want to go home. Sometimes it is not even a little bit exciting because you are not thinking about this new place, you want to be somewhere else. Traveling to places to meet people that exhaust you and you do not want to meet but have to for certain reasons beyond your control, make the place exhausting too, because your attitude towards them blends in with your attitude towards that whole place in general. It is like when you don't like a person, their name is always ruined and other people with that name just do not make you feel good, even though they might be completely nice people.

Traveling has both sides to it, always. It is always either a spectacular journey that brings you joy and uncovers something about you that you yourself did not know about or it is a tremendous effort and it leaves you and everyone around you exhausted and frustrated in the end. Sometimes, it is a degree of both.

The point is, traveling is not for everyone but it is definitely for those with an open mind and who are willing to see where life takes them next.