Learnings From My Travels
In 2016, I had a chance to travel to South East Asia, where I was able to visit China, Vietnam, Singapore, and Thailand. It had been for a course while I was in university. The course consisted of visiting different social enterprises, businesses that promote social causes. One of the places that comes to my memory is a massage place where blind masseuses were hired in order to provide them with job opportunities. This is a place making a difference in those people’s lives, as being blind in some of those countries can be difficult and often makes them susceptible to different sorts of abuse. I learnt a lot about social enterprises and saw how beautiful the people and culture of Asia are.
In 2018, I traveled to Europe, Holland, and Belgium. It was my first time in Europe. I was very excited. I was very happy to see my good friends located in Holland. The purpose of the travel was again for a university course. This course was more like an experience-based course that allowed participants to learn about other cultures. Students stayed with host families. Host families are volunteer families who open their homes to share with people from different countries. I stayed with amazing couples who were so kind and left me feeling like I have a family in Holland. It was a great time which included beautiful sight seeing as well.
I also want to mention that I had gone to my home country Ethiopia a couple of times, for an internship and for vacation. I am currently preparing for my third trip to Ethiopia for vacation. I will be going in about a week. As beautiful as the memories of my vacations have been, and I would not change them for anything, my travels have made me consider the importance of building a sustainable life. By that I mean I don’t want to work to go on a vacation. I want to build a life where traveling will not impact my day-to-day life, especially financially.
As I thought about this more and more, I realized that we work jobs that enslave us; it could be that we don’t like our jobs or they are repetitive or momentary. The way I look at it is, vacation is a short-cut or short break from that enslavement. Therefore, as I get older, I want to focus on building a career that will allow me to live and travel with ease and make a positive impact in people’s lives. I want to live a life without compromise when it comes to money, freedom and time.
Nardos Yared Negussie is 23 years old. She is from Ethiopia. Nardos is a fun-loving individual who is also ambitious and a visionary. She attended the King’s University for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. She is currently working at the bank and would like to become a successful entrepreneur in the near future to create work opportunity for the people of Ethiopia.