Sunday November 17th 2024, Diani, Kenya

It is Sunday morning on the beaches of Kenya overlooking the Indian Ocean and I am sitting here reflecting on my trip. I am two months into my adventure. I have been on the beach of Diani for a week, taking life slow and improving my body and mind. What comes to mind right now is the idea of community. I realized and cemented the importance of community. It has been cool in Diani being in a place where there is not a lot of people and you get to meet people more than once and create a form of community. I have been playing volleyball everyday with the same people and have met some of the workers at the resorts here. This weekend Zach and I hung out with all the locals and they taught us afro-beats dances. It was nice forming that bond, not as a one-off thing, but as a continual community building process. That being said I can't help to dichotomize the community process here in Diani Beach Kenya and the community I have in Dallas. Having a central place to socialize is key for any community building. Here it is the hostel and in Dallas it is Chabad. Any good community has a solid center. When I think of the future of urban planning, having a center place which is not overcrowded is key to make a community blossom. The morning routine I have here is great. The morning you have the ability to open your psyche or make it more cluttered. The key steps I have found to make sure your mind is not stiff in the morning and throughout the day are: nature, water, move the body, read/write/think/pray, no screens. These things simultaneously abstract yourself out of your mind and take you within to help you kickstart your day. Now thinking ahead, the next couple of months are really exciting. I am really looking forward to the nature and beauty of Nepal. A big part of traveling is connecting with the people, culture, and food of each place. I believe Nepal will be super unique in all aspects. It is seeming that I will have time to go through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam fully and at times alone. It will be important to integrate my learnings over the past two months into the Southeast Asia part of the trip. That means creating mini-communities by staying in one location while also moving when the time is right and choosing excursions wisely. There will be lots more beach time and beach volleyball ahead I presume. Finally, my money dedicated for this trip will run out in the near future. There are many exciting ways I can see that process unfolding and how I integrate all of my learnings from this trip. For now staying present is the most important thing but I cannot help but think about the possibilities ahead.