To my pleasant astonishment, a girl from the Brazilian Amazon reached out to me on Instagram. I had posted about some clinical volunteering with a medical team from Yangon and was about to head to ThaBarWa for my first experience with social work. Anny told me she was a doctor, and asked if I knew of opportunities in Myanmar where she could apply her skills as she would soon fly into Yangon.

 

 

Doubtful that a doctor would put up with the conditions that came along with backpacking, imagine my confusion when she told me she had stayed in hostels. I invited her to meet me in ThaBarWa. Fast forward to the nightly volunteer meeting one week later and a tanned, curly-haired young woman was giving me a wink.

And so I picked up another piece of my soul in a place that was quite literally reeking of poverty. Such instantaneous friendships have happened once each summer. After Anna and Parbs I just knew that for this trip, Anny was the one.

As soon the volunteers were dismissed we ran into each other’s arms and sat for hours to what felt like catching up with a sister. Occasionally we would massage our temples, or reach for a piece of jack fruit to help digest the staggering amount of history and ideas we had in common:

We found clinical opportunities in Asia by walking down the street, alone, with a map in hand.

Wait—other people do this too?! Anny was in Nepal, looking for “the big pagoda in Kathmandu.” A man on a motorbike offered her a ride, she decided to trust him, and as it turned out he worked for a doctor of traditional Tibetan medicine in a clinic within the temple. Anny introduced herself to the doctor and ended up completing an internship with him.

I was in Yangon, looking for the train station, and noticed a very large hospital en route. Those who have read this post know how this one ends. Let’s just say Anny and I were each spontaneously shadowing doctors within days of each other.

We are Gators.

The University of Florida has this notoriously large thing called the Gator Nation. Anyone associated with the school and sympathizes with our devout loyalty to our athletics program is forever a Gator.

Anny had busted her ass for the first 18 years of her life to make it to medical school. And after the first few terms, she was burning out. She applied to an exchange program that was essentially taking a gap year in the middle of her degree. Still taking classes, just not doing medical school. The program placed her at UF out of all the universities in the wide world. I am unable to picture what my face might have looked like when I asked Anny where in Florida she studied and she responded, “Oh, just Gainesville, you probably don’t know it.”

UF has employed my mother since 1993. Then she had me, and 18 years later I chose to go to UF. I have never not lived in Gainesville. The hospital I was born in sits on the same road as campus, the same road as the house I lived in with my friends.

My mom is a Gator. My childhood teachers were Gators. My dentist is a Gator.

Anny was right under my nose for the entirety of my junior year of high school. I spent a month in her country last summer. And we ultimately cross paths in Myanmar?

The yoga thing.

A lot of girls like Anny and I like a little sun salutation and downward dog in our lives. But it’s just funnier when Anny, who did her certification to teach yoga in Thailand within the last months, started her journey as a yogi in the UF gym attending the free classes taught by other UF students for free. Just like me. This is precisely how I’ve learned all of the arm balances or inversion poses that I know.

The research thing.

As undergraduates at UF, we both sought professors of the College of Veterinary Medicine for unpaid positions in their laboratories to gain experience and learn about science during our free time.

Writing.

We both keep files in our laptops. Documents filled with our thoughts. She’s toying with the idea of blogging and writing a book, I’m toying with the idea of a book. Long-term travel with no end date is most fulfilling when diaries and mindful reflections are involved. And it’s nice to share for the benefit of others.

January 2018 Update: A woman of her word, Anny now has a blog. It’s linked here.

Meditation.

I’m a beginner. I’m not even close to consistent. But Anny has completed multiple Vipassana retreats involving days of silence and all that stuff found all over Thailand. In the coming weeks I would practice meditation and Buddhist principles in another site. When I told Anny to come to TBW, I said it was a meditation center, and she was replying “OMG. OMG.” Of course this alarmed me even more.

We are banned.

Our parents talk about us to our younger siblings as if we are the anti-role models of our families. Because we are. Our friends’ parents won’t let their children join us. Because we have lost it. Because the world is too dangerous.

We find our answers through travel.

All it takes is booking a plane ticket, but so few of us do it. For Anny and I, our mental health has drastically improved because we decided to break away from the system that once sickened us. Our societies and city lives create such a falsely justified amount of pressure on all young adults. Leaving home to learn about life simply because our intuition told us so has been an incredibly mind-clearing process in and of itself.

Within the medical world, we see sick people who continue their unhealthy lifestyles and rely on pharmaceutical drugs to stay functional. We see a lack of genuine concern for a patient’s well-being among the medical staff. We see desensitization. Anny and I feel it is important to address the root of one’s medical problems and take a holistic view, which isn’t emphasized enough in school or in society at large.

I have always wanted to trust that I could just go and let things fall into place. My parents would always remind me about the “how” question, and remind me that I need to have a lot of money so I can feel secure and be happy.

But I think not knowing the answers is what keeps life interesting, which is what I want everyone else to know. Especially all you adolescents and 20-something-year-olds.

Surely if I stay true to who I am then the right people will show up in my life. Crazy things will happen, and later it will all make perfect sense.

 

For Example

Humor me here and try to follow my logic.

Anny graduated medical school and worked with patients in favelas outside São Paolo. After tossing and turning and starting a quarter-life crisis, she was on the brink of buying a car and pursuing a residency to specialize her skills. Then she decided to flip everything upside down, throw on a backpack, and fly one-way to Asia.

I have always wanted to take a multi-year trip after finishing medical school, but in the US you have to do your bachelors first. In Brazil you start med directly after high school and tuition is often free. In the US you cannot practice without completing a residency.

Had I not realized it’s easier to break for travel now, had I not decided to take time off before medical school, I would be home this summer, applying to a future that will put me in debt and cause me to stress eat and gain weight. There would be no Myanmar trip. There would be no learning how to take blood pressure. I would not have found Anny.

Had I not gone to UF, I wouldn’t have the scholarship money to travel, and again meeting Anny would have never happened, and then I wouldn’t have figured out that she went to UF and that we’ve eaten at the same Steak and Shakes.

Had I not gone to Anny’s country thanks to a last-minute decision one year ago, I would have never met Parbs, who was the one who influenced me to go to Myanmar in the first place. And I would have never met Anny. Perhaps Anny would have never heard of ThaBarWa, where her medical training is currently changing lives.

AND, and, had I never met Parbs I would never hear Parbs tell me that she was taking multiple gap years to experience local cultures (workaway!) in her bucket list countries before she plans on going back to Canada to apply to medical school. Her plan was now my plan, as of December 2016.

I keep saying “meeting Anny,” but why was this so significant?

She was the living proof of my original dream. As she continues her nomadism, those around her are visibly improving from her suggestions, which everyone takes very very very seriously because she has the medical degree. We all have experience and input, but she is the doctor. To be genuinely useful when I travel is exactly why I want the letters M and D after my name, and nothing short of it.

What made me notice I had a message request on Instagram? It usually take months. I was just about to shut off wifi for a social media cleanse. What made her follow me at the start of my trip, before I mentioned anything medical? She doesn’t even remember how she found my account.

Anny showed me what it means to be a real doctor. She embodied the intersection between love and medicine. Our short time together was powerful enough to make me seriously reconsider my education plans. After all, I have this valid MCAT score just sitting on the back burner.

Since befriending Anny, I have interacted with numerous nurses from around the world and come into contact with two more physicians. I didn’t seek anyone or put in efforts.

I’ve just been, you know, traveling.

Everything I shared in this post is too much to be random chance.

Current state of the union of my near future = totally up in the air.

And I’m excited to see what I will end up doing.