Where do you find your inspiration? (Where do you find your inspiration?)

Who lives sees but who travels sees more.

(Arabic proverb)

Chicago, the cultural center, a pile of white sheets, then carefully, then scattered on the shelves, caught my attention. I run, intrigued, and the forehead from somewhere above is struck by a question that spreads throughout the wall: “Where do you find your inspiration?”

And then hundreds of white sheets of opinion rustled, whispered, ringed with their voices: "The traveling", "Good weather", "In kind eyes and a good soul". His hands unknowingly reached for the paper. One, two... and now I’m holding my precious word “People.” I keep my personal point of view that found me on this pleasantly drawn-out journey. People are definitely people. Break, make stronger, attract, teach, interest, annoy, surprise, fall in love, respect, listen. Inspiring...

But we are all mosaic people, looking for our puzzles. Some are in their own country, others are in the other hemisphere. You can endlessly talk about national parks, megacities, monuments, libraries, museums and neighborhoods. You can see it all yourself, and you can go everywhere if you want. So I leave it on your conscience...

It is much more interesting to talk about people, they are really unique. It’s impossible to copy dating circumstances, people’s habits, words, and worldviews; your new buddy’s random train of thought, conversations that piece together your mosaic step by step, adding missing details.

I never thought it was so easy to get to know each other, but in America it was. You're humble at first, and then you can't stop.

Many students from different countries worked with me. This is how I got to know Dima, Vitya and Vlad – Ukrainians with whom, grinding our teeth and turning all the daily hardships into jokes, we never gave up. I remember Lenka and Marcel, the guys from Bratislava who taught me Slovak phrases and words. All this sounded like a distorted Russian, therefore, every minute causing storms of laughter. The Egyptian Sheriff, with whom it was never boring, made our everyday life by no means routine. Sidney is an American woman whom I loved to ask for help learning English, also forever in my memory. As I remember now, every single one of them was a crumpled little piece of paper that said, "Masha's list," where she wrote down new words for me.

I got to know Wes, a hardworking, reckless and at the same time serious American with Russian roots, who showed us the books of the 1500s in the Old Russian language left over from his grandmother. He watched films about the Romanov family and could talk about history for hours. Alex is an American, Greek and Spanish by birth, who sang soundly at work, only having time to turn burgers on the grill, whistle and dance. He infected with his love of life and sincerity. And you suddenly realized, “How can you not love life?” How can you not be happy with what you have? How can you not appreciate that?

I found another wonderful person – Alsu from Chelyabinsk, who was my loyal, crazy travel companion throughout the entire trip. With her, we loved exploring the States with no plan. It was scary and it was fun. Always found adventure, a lot of "couchsurfing" (see couchsurfing), spent the night in the Harvard dormitory, went hiking with an Indian and two Frenchmen, fell off their feet with fatigue, did not feel erased feet, fell asleep in the zoo, wandered around the roofs of Philadelphia, explored New York at night, walked through the Italian neighborhoods of Boston - became not tourists, but travelers ...

I remember Vika from Moscow, who helped me realize that traveling is not so expensive and quite real, if you know how. She played the piano, read poetry, we could talk for a long time about our future plans. “To conquer a thousand mountains, to travel around the world and to find ourselves,” echoed our thoughts.

I was inspired by another person with whom I could talk to the crack of a fire, the sound of the surf and the songs of Louis Armstrong until the morning. It was the owner of our house, Rod. We went camping with him, he showed us New York, played volleyball and basketball. In America, you'll never guess how old a person is. After all, if you are happy and satisfied, do not rush to close yourself from others and want to try new things, then you are eternally young. That's what Rod taught me.

And then a trip to the West and more acquaintances. Serbs who liked to joke about Russia, where they believed only vodka and eat and speak with a firm and coarse accent. The guys from Kyrgyzstan we met and talked to in Chicago inspired me to speak Turkish, Russian and English.

Angelina and Grisha, Moscow and Vladivostok are my best team on the West Coast. And then I was convinced again: wherever you go, it is very important to feel that you have the right people with you. They make the perception even brighter and wider. Another lesson...

There were many other acquaintances, not to count and not to remember. Most importantly, all this was an experience and definitely taught to strive for constant development, not to be afraid of difficulties, to go on an adventure, to love and appreciate every day lived. After all, it is very valuable just to be wise and in any situation, wherever life has gone, to perceive everything that happened as your own invaluable life experience.

That's America! America, which opened the doors to me of a cozy living room, so different somewhere to shine polished, and in some places sprinkled. There was a place for an immigrant in a musty corner, and a businessman in a suit for hundreds of dollars. The living room, stretching for millions of square kilometers, where jazz constantly plays, drives a yellow taxi, and outside the window the trees of Central Park and the oceans, on the one hand the Pacific, on the other - the Atlantic noise, raging, overflowing with waves ...

The living room, where somehow there were people from all over the world. Here the Belgians whisper on the flumish, the Belarusians brag about the clean streets, the Serbs weave their meat dishes by both cheeks, the Slovaks shout "Ahoi!" and chuckle with a pebble; the French, the Irish, the Egyptians, the Mexicans who strive to kiss your cheek at every opportunity; the Peruvians who have fled for a better life; and, of course, we are Russian students who once seemed a distant dream ... Now we sit and slowly reflect, satisfied that we were there, sipping coffee while talking and listening to the ocean ... in the same living room ...

A few words about my American summer, Wanderlust.

Author of text and photo: Maria Oborina