15 Countries. 5 Continents. A Life Forever Changed | Book Recommendation | Episode 168

Hey, bookaholics, today we are joined by, with Ebony Walden, who is an author, filmmaker, and speaker who has traveled to nearly 50 countries and all 50 states. She is the founder of Ebony Walden Consulting, a racial equity-focused consulting firm, and creator of Black Beyond Borders, a documentary series and podcast exploring creativity, Culture, connection, and cuisine across the African diaspora. Ebony also writes Beyond Borders, a weekly sub-stack newsletter on travel and transformation. Hi, Ebony. Welcome to the Bookaholic Podcast. Thank you, Deidre. So, so good to meet you. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Ebony, I'm no stranger to travel. When I was little, we would take a family vacation like once a year, you know, to the beach or whatever. When I met my soon-to-be husband in 1992, that's when my travel journeys and adventures really took off. Um, fast forward, I've been fortunate enough to spend two weeks in Ghana. Uh, I've traveled a few times to France and England, Spain and other places. And my sweet spot here in America is Cape Cod. Now, yes, yes, yes, yes. So travel is, is expensive and I can understand how. The cost of travel can inhibit a lot of people from traveling. And there's also fear built around the language barrier. I can understand that as well. But now this may or may not be a myth. I'm prefacing this. It could be a myth. But what do you think of the statement that Black men don't like to travel? I'm not sure if they don't like to travel. I think that they are less likely to travel. But I know Black men that travel. The vast majority of people I know that travel are, however, Black women. I think there is a lot of reasons for that. I think women in general are more likely to explore. Just be explorers in both their interiority and exteriority. So you see such an abundance of black women solo traveling and then they travel like I do meet up with other black women because there's an inherent sense of community. I'm not sure that the way men are socialized, that they're in that way that wherever I go, I find a black traveling group and find me some black women. It's mostly like 70, 85% women and some men in there. So we are also, uh, socialized to be doing things by ourselves or in community because we're like, okay, I met this sister and we had a good time. So I just think it's, it's different. Um, and I think, you know, it, it may be also exposure, right? So we know that black women in this country are like the most educated group of people. Yes. With the most like PhDs of any like demographic group. And so I think that those type of education gives you being out of your comfort zone because you have to be in these institutions, probably predominantly white institutions and in these places where you're outside of your comfort zone. And you have to weather a lot of life, you know, in spaces alone. And I think that those are tools that you need for travel, right? To be fundamentally, not that men don't have them, but women that by virtue of them. Being in these spaces and being more, you don't have to be educated to travel, but I do think it opens your mind a bit to what else is out there. You're exposed to different people. You're exposed to different things. And you're used to maybe work or other places, just going places by yourself. And I think if you are a woman going places by yourself, I guarantee you it's easy to find another Black woman who wants to journey with you. When I recently, so I went remote working last year, I went to Senegal. There's a Black woman in Senegal's group, and we're kiki-ing, right? I went to Mexico City. There's a Black woman's group in Mexico City, and we're kiki-ing. First day I got there, the next day I'm walking with these Black women in Chapultepec Park, which is kind of like Central Park, right? I got invited to somebody's house. And so I think we commune in different ways that make it easier for us to be out of our comfort zone, to travel alone. And we're traveling usually for a sense of like purpose and adventure. And I think that sometimes the socialization of men doesn't kind of force them into those settings. Not that there aren't men that are educated that are outside of their comfort zones, but I think it's a little bit easier for women because we're used to navigating in those spaces. Yes, absolutely. I agree 100%. So what got you on your travel bent? Yeah, so my new book, Where I'm From, A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents, is about my first, so the first time I travel, I go big or go home. So I went on a five continent, 17 country trip around the world. That was my, that wasn't my first time traveling. I had been to Mexico and Canada. And I think Paris and a couple of other places before then, but not a whole lot and always with people. My friend gave me the idea to go on an around the world trip. He called me up one day and said, I'm going to go on an around the world trip. By the time we got off the phone, I had convinced him and like even convinced myself. The question is not why, but why not? He didn't end up going on the trip, but I ended up going on an around the world trip. So I went to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, Spain, France. Italy, Belgium, Holland, Kenya, South Africa, India, Thailand, China, Japan, and Australia. And when you've gone to that many places by, by yourself, then you just get a travel bug. When I got back, I decided I wanted to visit all 50 States and I completed that. I think in, uh, wanted to do 50 by 40, but the pandemic happened. So I think I completed that in 2021 or 2022. And as of. later this year I've been to 50 countries. So I just got a taste in, I want to go someplace. I know how to stay safe. I know how the things I want to do. I love to eat. I love to drink. I love to do cultural things and festivals. And so I just built my life around taking a couple of trips a year, whether it was domestic trips or international trips, mostly solo, but probably the last three or four years I've been doing more group or Community trips. Because once you do it, you're like, oh, I can do this. This is easy. I know how to navigate. Language is never a barrier. I think that I'm in tune. Like, here's the thing. You learned the 10 phrases that you need in that country. You need directions, left, right. You need to know ten phrases. Yeah, yeah. You got to know, like, directions. Like, how do you find? You need that phrase. Like, you need the bathroom. You need to figure out how to do your check. Right. You need, you need a cab. You need to know how to eat. Other than that, you know, and now, which they didn't have back then, you have Google Translate. So like, and so there's that. And then so many of the cultural capitals around the world, I think England is the unofficial like international language. So, so there's that. And I fundamentally learned how to connect with people beyond words, right? 80% of communication is nonverbal. So, you know, I've had whole conversations, you know, you want to get to know people and people are generally, you know, helpful. So I have not had any problems traveling. There've been a couple of hairy moments, but they're, they're a bunch of hairy moments in my day-to-day life. So. Absolutely. I don't know. Bookaholics, I have a QR code on the screen. It will lead you directly to Ebony's book where I'm from on Amazon. I may earn a small commission, but it is no additional cost to you. I'll just leave that up for the remainder of the interview and scan that at any time. Now, Ebony, let's go back to your around the world trip. Did you do this? This was all at one time. Yep. So it was eight months. Eight months. It was 2010. So it was 16 and a half years ago almost. So it was eight months across 17 countries. I read about 15 in the book. I backpacked, I volunteered, and I wrote a poem with people. It's called Where I'm From. That's why the book is called Where I'm From. So in the back of the book, if you buy the book. Or if you go to my website, ebonywalden.com, you can buy the poem. It's seven lines, and those seven lines are really asking people, it gets the gist of people's lives and cultural perspective. So, like, what are the names of the people in your family? What are some staples in your neighborhood? Your biggest joys, your biggest tragedies, your favorite music, your favorite food. And you go, you fill that in, and then you read the poem in every line. It goes, I am from, I am from, and then the end is where I'm from. So I workshopped this. I would find somebody that was interested in, and I'd say, hey, would you do this poem for me? But I had to already have had a connection because it's kind of an intrusive thing to just be walking up to people on the street. So people I volunteered with, people I met backpacking, children that I was working with. I volunteered at schools, community centers, in orphanages or children's homes around the world. Um, yeah. And, um, it was $30,000 to go on around the world trip at the time. So if I sold everything I knew, I mean, sold everything I had and with my savings, I had about seven and I was like, okay, I need $23,000 real quick. So I asked 150 people to give me $150. That's 22,500. I had a bunch of fundraisers and A year after I got the idea, I was on a plane, I had a website, I had a blog, it was called the Poetic Justice World Tour, and the lens by which I was looking through the trip, I was going to do poetry. I'm a poet, I was a spoken word artist at the time, and I was hosting open mics, so I was well versed in the power of poetry to allow people to share their stories, but also To allow ourselves to be seen and heard. And so I wanted to do that around the world. So I wrote poetry. I captured other people's poetry. I did poetry workshop with youth and adults and it was a whole thing. I had a website and you could see where I was at the time. If you invested, you got a postcard for somewhere around and you're like, where's Ebony? So I blogged like maybe every two or three days and did a newsletter. So it was like a whole project. When I got back, I did a art exhibit where I, it was around the world and 80 photos where I took all of my pictures from around the world and have these. Like big movable boards and each one was a continent. So I shared the stories and poems and pictures of people. I did a presentation. I wrote some songs with my pastor. So it was, you know, I like to, as my grandmother said, I like to make a big project out of things. So all of that is kind of put into the book. The book is the journey of me going around the world. You'll see the poems are interspersed with... the with the people I met and then you get a window into where I'm from. So I grew up in New York and Queens and Long Island. I had a single parent household. I grew up on welfare. So you get my story from eight, how I ended up going to Georgetown and UVA and how I ended up going around the world. So I say the book is about the people, the places I went, the people I met, the poetry I I created with them. And how that helped me reckon with my own story and my own past. And really, the trip changed my perspective on life, love, and leadership. How do you just become a whole person? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Ebony, you are resourceful at this. Yes. You are resourceful at best. And I just love that story, you know, and I was going to ask you, how did you fund such a trip? But you did explain that. And I really appreciate that. That'll be great. Thanks. Did you coordinate all your trip or did you use a travel agent? I appreciate that. Thank you. So, again, thank you to all of you for sharing that. And thank you to all of the people who are watching this, and thank you to all of our listeners for sharing that. So I will stop there. So I had, I coordinated my whole trip. Thank you so much. Have a great day. And I'll see you guys next time. So, so it started from where are the places that I would want to go? Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Just like dreaming. Bye. Bye. And because it was around the world trip, Bye. I wanted to go to every continent. Bye. Bye. So they're like, you know, Australia was on there. Bye. Bye. Bye. And then I said, I knew I wanted to volunteer because backpacking for Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Eight months would have been, I like meaning and I like, Bye. Bye. um, I wanted to see what was beautiful in the world and what was broken and how could I find beauty in the brokenness? So I knew I had to be engaging with, you know, the world wonders like you would do an around the world trip, but I wanted to know what was life like on the margins of those particular places, um, as well. So I figured out where I could volunteer. And so my trip was based around where do I want to go? What is the right path? Because you either need to go east or west because if you zigzag and go back and forth, it's going to cost you. So the only thing I didn't coordinate myself is I had a travel agent who bought my tickets. I was adamant that I wanted to have open tickets because I'm like some places I'm going to want to stay longer and some places I'm going to be like, yeah, I'm out of here. So I said, these are the places I want to go. Find me. The best route and the least expensive way to get there. So, you know, my tickets were about $8,000 to go West. So I went from New York to Central America, South America, Europe, and Africa, then all through Asia and Australia and back home. Oh my gosh. Wow. That is really amazing. It was quite the journey. Yes, absolutely. And to do it all by yourself, I'm going to say, I'm going to add this in, you are brave at best. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Now let's go back to the solo travel and the fact that I have a lot of, I won't say friends, but associates, women that I know and that I've I've known through different organizations and stuff, and I see them online. I have a friend who, oh, wow, she lives in some South American country now. And she's an expat, and I can't remember where she's at, but it's a South American country. Okay. Thank you. And then we had the Tracy Ellis Ross did this whole solo travel thing Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. and everything. So how long have you been participating in the study? Okay. So what advice would you give to women? I need to go. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. of any background or culture, what, you know, Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This is a great, fabulous talk. about how it is to travel safely. I think a lot Thank you. Thank you all so much. Thank you. of women would travel, you know, um, Bye-bye. Thank you all so much. what was the woman in Eat, Pray, Love? You know, I think a lot Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay. I think we have one more question. of women of various backgrounds want to travel Yes, through you. We have one more. We have one. and solo and just go for it. I have had, um, I look at YouTube videos of people with C-class RVs. And I want to take a C-class RV and just do a little digital nomading, you know? So what advice would you give those women who want to solo travel to be safe? Yeah, I think that, like, you have to figure out where you want to go and why and what you want to do. And then research where the best place is for you to stay. I think the world is... A lot safer and more dangerous than you think. Okay, first, you have to start small. So if you are afraid to travel alone, go to dinner alone a couple times in your community. Take a one-hour overnight trip and say, what would my itinerary be if I go there? We have like AI. So you say, hey, I want you to stay in the downtown area. Stay in an area that's well lit. And has a lot going on because where, where, where lights are, where people are and where eyes are, you're primarily safe. You're dark and no one's around. So do not walk alone at night by yourself. And that's anywhere. Like I might like, uh, downtown, you know, Richmond at a Friday night, I might be walking alone by myself because there are so many people around. So stay in place where you feel safe. So I would also start with. Staying in hotels near brightly lit downtowns, figuring out your itinerary, don't walk alone at night in dark or places that you just fundamentally feel unsafe. Always watch your drink and you really have to activate your discernment. There are things I've done around the world that I would never do at home. Like you meet somebody and you just. A man or a woman or just like, oh, hey, let's have lunch. Let's do this. You really have to trust yourself, right? If you, if you see something, say something, if you feel unsafe, be like, no, I'm out of here. I have the way to go. But I have never had any major circumstances. I go on a lot of tours, so I don't need to be, I'm fine with, with, what is it? Traipsing around by myself. But I'm like, yeah. Let me go with somebody who knows the food so I won't get sick. They have a vested interest in me not getting sick. I can eat all the street food I want because they take people on these trips. So if somebody gets sick, they don't have a business, right? So you can go on tours, look, TripAdvisor and Viator, right? You can go in any, even Airbnb experience has tours. Go on tours, figure out what you like. So I like. Food tours, I like to go to museums, I like festivals, I like music, I like cultural events, I like outdoor things. So my trip might be a combination of all those things. But if you fundamentally want to relax, you'd be like, I just want to relax. I want a nice hotel by the beach. So start small, start where you are, and then build out. So if you never... I jump in the deep end of things. So I had never solo traveled and decided I want to go on a round-the-world trip. But if you're leery, right, go on a Friday night or whatever night of the book. Take a book and be like, what is it like to just have dinner by myself? Yes. Yes. What is it like to go on a overnight trip by myself? What would I do? What is it like to go on a city you've never been before? Go on a weekend trip, ChatGPT or Claude or whatever could put you together, itinerary, do all the things you like, because you will have a sense of what would I want to do in this place that's overseas, right? Do I want to eat? I want good food I want to eat and drink. There's so much stuff online. Look on Instagram. They'll give you a whole itinerary of the best places to go, particularly the best places to go for Black people. So I just look. I'll be like, oh, girl, that looks good. Look on Instagram, TikTok. There's so many resources that I didn't have. Like, I had a guidebook. Now you have the internet. So you're going to be fine. I would say try to stay in hotels first. I stay in Airbnbs, but it depends on when you arrive. So if I'm arriving someplace late, Uh, or I need somebody to hold my luggage. I don't stay in Airbnbs, right? So if I'm arriving some place at eight in the morning and Airbnb doesn't open to three or four check-in, I said, okay, I'm going to stay in a hotel. Cause I want to, don't want to lose my whole day waiting for them to drop my bag, right? Or if it's someplace where they're like, you don't need to be up in the neighborhood. You need to be downtown where all the action is happening. Right. So look online, be safe. Figure out what you want, start small, and then just venture out from there. Very good advice. Very good advice. Now let's talk about cultural travel, mainly African travel. So, and let me go back to something before somebody dings me somewhere. The only reason I mentioned earlier about black men and travel is that I've heard a lot of black women say, whether they were associates or people online, that they couldn't get their husbands or boyfriends to travel. You know, so therefore they went with girlfriends. Yeah, leave their asses at home. They went with, you know, so now then fast forward. Now the cultural travel, then I have found there's a whole lot of black people who have a stake in the game of Africa don't want to go to Africa. And, you know. I know there's a lot of pain and trauma there and a lot of people's thoughts and where they're coming from with all this stuff. But we did go to Ghana with friends and family. We were very fortunate that a doctor that lives in our town He has a house in Ghana because they're from there. And so we were able to use their home. They let us use their home. They had a chef there. They had cleaning people. They had, you know. So we were able to go to their home and use their home. No cost to us. We just paid the staff. And we were very fortunate. And this particular person's brothers is who took us around on tours. And, you know, so we learned a lot of stuff. It was, it was wonderful. It was really wonderful. So though, and I am not an adventure person, for example, I'm not going to get on your zip line. And zip line. But I mean, I've done that before. I don't need to do it again. Nope. I had the nerve to go to a national park in Ghana and walk along the tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did that. Where you walk and it's like rope thing. Yeah. I did it. It was fun. But it was like nerve wracking for sure. It was fun, but totally not me. Well, you know, that's the problem. You get to do something you haven't done before. But yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know. You mentioned this sort of, one of the things about travel, it's definitely going to enrich you. And I remember thinking when I first went to, say, Spain or France and I was maybe just sitting in a plaza and just looking at people, I thought, you know, all this time we've been told America is the greatest country on Earth. I was like, well, where I'm at right now, it's pretty great. It's pretty great. I'm chill. I don't have to worry about gun violence for the most part. You know, I might have to worry about some old school crimes like. Yeah, but you know, I can handle that. In most countries, guns are not a big thing. Like you go to England, you just have guns. And so there is that. And then when I went to Africa, I definitely felt at home with the people. I had no fears at all when you're thinking about people-wise. Um, and I went, we went to the, I think it's the Snake River and where the last bath took place. Yeah, yes. And we all got in the water and we did a whole ceremony. Our guide at the time, we did a whole ceremony. When I got out of that water. Ebony, I howled. I howled out loud, crying. Thank you for being there. That is where I got very emotional, you know. And the castles are an emotional place, too. But the Snake River got me. Yeah, that's because it's. It's visceral, like you're in the water. And so much of our African-American, like, spirituals, we sang Wade in the Water. So we know the significance of the water, and it's like a baptism. So it's very visceral, where the slave dungeons are because you can be in the dungeon. But when you go down in that water and you come back, it has a double meaning. Because we know what water means on this side, and it's like a rebirth or baptism. And we were singing. Uh, spirituals. So yeah, that's powerful. I love the continent. I've been to seven countries on the African continent. So I've been to Gambia. I've spent a significant amount of time in Senegal, in Morocco, in Kenya, in, um, South Africa and Ghana. I go to Tanzania to Zanzibar in January. I'm going back to Ghana and I hope to, um, in the next year or so. So, so, so I have, I did my. Ancestry and my African ancestry. So my ancestry says I have roots or DNA from about seven or eight modern day African countries. So I want to set my foot in each of those. So I'm about three in now. So I have a have a long way to go, mostly in West Africa. So I want to do that to pay homage to my ancestors because we are here because of them. And that really is the... You know, that really was the source of my documentary series. So my documentary series is called Black Beyond Borders. And it's essentially me picking a country across the continent or the diaspora to go and spend an extended period of time in, like a month. And highlighting the beauty, culture, creativity, and cuisine of that place. I think a lot of people don't want to go to the continent because they're ignorant. And not ignorant in this, like, I'm not being pejorative, but, like, you just don't know. Just think about the prevailing images of Africa that we saw, that I saw growing up. It was like Save the Children campaign. So you see hunger. Everybody thinks there's animals everywhere. Nobody's living in the hut unless it's, like, way out in rural places. So they're not really seeing. True and modern images of Africa that are not through the white eyes. Or white lens, but I've been across Africa. So I've seen the source in West Africa, and I've seen the seeds across the America where those enslaved Africans landed all over the United States, particularly in the US South. So I've been everywhere from South Carolina to the I just got back from the Delta region, of course, New Orleans, those places that places that are steeped in blackness, I went to every country in Central America, and particularly on the Uh, coast of there, uh, where the Caribbean is, you will see black communities there. Um, every place is black people in Guatemala, you know, in all of those places I have been Brazil, which has the largest population of any country of black people outside of the continent, because most people don't know this, but over half of people that were brought to the Americas and the transatlantic slave trade went to Brazil. Oh. Yes, they had like 5 million of those 12 and a half or so million people. The U.S. only had 400,000. So there was a huge, yes, there's a huge Afro-Brazilian population, people that, you know, look at the range. They're mixed like we are, but they look, it could be my color or they would look like what you would think of a light-skinned Black person and everywhere in between. It's not the... There is the Latino-looking Brazil people, but there's a lot of Afro-Brazil. There is a huge Afro-Colombian population. There's also an Afro-Ecuadorian, also in Peru, on the coast. Because these were places where folks would be taken to the transatlantic slave trade. So I basically want to go to all those places and show you the beauty of those places, the culture of those places, the cuisine, that you can have a beautiful time. And these are beautiful people. They're like our cousins spread across the Americas. And I want to change the image that Blackness means something negative, that it means something lacking, that something without. It says wherever we landed, we created something new. You do not get like jazz and reggae and samba. You don't get santeria or candomblé or all these different forms. You don't get... Gumbo or all of these or Garifuna soup or culture, you don't get those without, you don't get blues, right? You don't get jazz. You do not get all of these without our contribution to the Americas. So Black Beyond Borders is my love letter to Black people, to the continent of Africa and the diaspora. I'm on my second season. First season, I spent six weeks in the CAR, Senegal. This season, which will be out, it's done, but it'll be out early next year, is my month-long trip through. Uh, Colombia. So it's just, people don't know they want to go to these places. Everybody I know who's been to the continent or not, they watch, it's 45 minutes, four episodes, look me up, Black Beyond Borders on, on YouTube. You'll be like, I want to, if you watch it, you'll say, I want to go to Senegal, uh, because it's beautiful. Now there are things that you have to deal with that are, you know, a lot of places don't have American privilege. So sometimes the grid is shaky there, but. If you are able, I grew up poor, so I improvise. Like, I understand, like, life is not going to be roses all the time, right? You give me a lemonade, I'm going to make you a lemonade. So. Um, but if you go saying, what is the beauty of this place? You will find it. If you go saying this place is not like the U S you will have the, you will find every reason that this place is not like the U S cause it's not supposed to be. Why are you traveling? Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's do a little quick hot round. If you can, what is your favorite country that you visited? So I don't have one favorite Senegal's in my top. So I spent a lot of time in Dakar, Senegal. I love the people. I love the food. It's a coastal city. So it's on the water. Some second places I loved Kenya too. The people were beautiful. They're very gracious and open and welcoming, and I love safari. It actually looks exactly like the Lion King, so it's like a once-in-a-lifetime. I've been to so many world wonders and buildings, but I think there's nothing like safari. You are in the open savanna. It's like you really see the circle of life. You see elephants in herds, you see prides of lions, you hear hyenas. The whole scene of the Lion King is real, and so is Hakuna Matata. I really like, yes, it's beautiful. I really like Thailand. I think that place is, I mean, Thailand is really friendly. I love Asian markets. You cannot go wrong. The food is great. I love anything curry in there. So I would say those are probably some of my top three places. But there are very few places that I've been to that. I don't like, I just find the beauty of that place. Even if I don't want to stay there for a long period of time, every place I have been to has its own beauty, but those are. Oh, absolutely. And one more, what is your favorite food that you found that you've discovered on your travels? So one of the favorite things that I like is this coconut curry soup. And it is, I call it a Garifuna soup because it's descendants of Garifuna people. I think it's called tapado or something. They have several names and it's this coconut curry. Uh, fish stew and you can get it in Honduras and you can also get it on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala, but it was 95 degrees. I was in Guatemala and I'm like, Oh, I didn't know there were black people in Guatemala. And I had this fish in my soup, coconut curry. It's descendant from the Garifuna people, the Garifuna people. It's a long history, but in Central America, they shipwrecked, they were enslaved Africans that shipwrecked onto Saint Vincent. They mixed with the indigenous people, the Carib people, and then they were so rebellious that the British will kick them off the island and they shipwrecked, I mean, and then they went to Honduras, to Roatán. So if you go to Roatán in Honduras, they have Garifuna culture, but it's like a half a million people, mostly in Central America, but they have a diaspora as well. If you listen to my episode of Black Beyond Borders podcast, you can learn about the Garifuna. But wonderful soup. I love Chebujen too. That is the national dish of Senegal. It's like their version of jollof, but I think it's better because it has rice and fish and vegetables. Chef's kiss. So those are my top two. Oh. Wow. Wow. Fascinating. Well, everybody, once again, there's a QR code right there on the screen for you to scan for Ebony's book. Like I said before, I earn a small commission, but it is no additional cost to you. Ebony, thank you so much for joining us today. We are going to have your information in the podcast show notes as well. The YouTube description box, I will be reaching out to you eventually for some more travel tips because I'm going to put the travel hat on in 2027. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And feel free to reach out if you're listening to this, you want some tips or you like the book or want to figure out how to do some of the same travels yourself. I love to engage with audiences. Yes, absolutely. Can't wait.