Discovering the World

I’m Megan White, mover extraordinaire.I call myself this because it’s what I do.  For the past year or so I’ve been living in upstate New York, but I’ve moved all over the US.  I jam the synthetic material of my small black suitcase into the overhead compartment, dirty socks and favorite books bulging against the zipper.  I stick my  sweaty arms out of backseat windows, palms slammed backwards in the wind.

In September I will be moving to Senegal.

How can I tell you just how and when I became interested in Global Citizen Year when I’ve been interested in it all my life?  When I lived outside of Denver, Colorado–I must have been four years old–we had a globe complete with “mountains”.  I would run my sticky hands over the Himalayas, spin the globe around and around and –stop– point to some random spot and swear I’d be there someday.  Although I’ve yet to make it to Riyadh, I’ve just never been able to get enough of the world.

But as I got older, I discovered that the world isn’t raised bumps on an old painted globe or the carpet of lights that is flying over D.C. at night.  The world is people.  The world is smiling women; the world is old men I meet in Colombian museums who love to ask me if I’m enjoying their country.  The world is spicy and hungry and angry and tough and lovely and smelly.  The world is Global Citizen Year helping to make a four year old girl’s dream come alive, and that girl helping and being helped by new friends, Senegalese as well as her other American Fellows.

World, here I come!