By Nhat Nguyen

Today was normal. Not so hot nor cold. Not so dry nor humid. There wasn’t any life-changing events nor any dramas that can blown your mind. It was a day that in Gen Z language, we called it a “filler episode”. Nothing significant, just a normal day. If there’s anything remarkable, then it was the day that we moved from the airbnb next to the lake to Guatemala city. So Nhat, SNhat, or whatever your name is, what is the point of your blog? What does it have to do with the title expectation that you named it? 

First, for those who ask these questions, I want to ask them back a question: what makes a “normal” day normal? It is because nothing big or memorable happened? Or it is because you don’t have any plan for that day? Well, they are all good reasons, but the most important aspects of all is expectation. Because we tends to expect something will happen in that day, something fun, something memorable, something unexpected will happen. So when nothing happens, we tends to feel empty, and we decided that it is just normal, and there’s nothing special about it. I have to admit that I have high expectations for the Guatemala trip. I expected to eat Guatemalan traditional food which I’d remember its flavor for life. I expected to jump out a cliff 12 meters above the water. I expected to go shopping and buy some expensive souvenirs. So with a day that none of the above happened, of course I’d think it is a normal boring day. 

However, my thought about the normal of the day started to change when we were driving down to Guatemala city. It all started with a question that Cuong told me to ask Herman which due to all the respect to those who read and listen to the blog right now, I will not mention it. You only need to know that after the question, it turned into a discussion where chain of laughs coming out and echoing the bus for  30 minutes. The conversation was the second funniest thing about the trip, which just behind the time I saw Loc jumped from the cliff and landed the water with every parts of the body but the feet. 

Then, after we had dinner and on the way back to our Airbnb, we had another conversation that I forgot what we were talking about specifically, but yeah it was fun. 

On this trip, the most important thing is that we all chose to spend time together talking rather than playing BlockBlast on our phones. Being in this country, people hang out with others. No one here seems to spend their time on the phones, especially in the village. They’re all interacting with the real world. Hanging out in the real world tends to bring something unexpected. The online world is created by people and the real world is not.

Even driving in the real world is unexpected. We thought a drive would be 2 minutes and it ended up being 20. Or 3 hours ended up being 7 hours. But that also opened up a lot of conversations and memories with the group. That’s what is cool about travel.

So after all, was my day as leader a normal day? Maybe. Was it fun? Yes definitely. For me, it was a fun day even we didn’t have any events or remarkable activities. If somebody ask we what is memorable about the trip, I’ll say helping the locals or learning about the culture. But if they asked me about whether the trip was fun, I will tell them all the small details that were unplanned and unexpected. Like the time a Guatemalan girl ask Cuong to take picture with him, the time we put an empty bottle behind Herman’s hoodie and he thought someone was tapping his neck for 10 minutes, or the time everyone danced together in a small restaurant while a stranger was singing. Happiness doesn’t need to come from big events or carefully-prepared plans, it can come from small talks, a late night drive, or the courage to express yourself and dance in a public place.

So when you feel your life is quite boring, don’t expect and wait a canon event to happen, instead find small details that made you laugh. Or you can even create an event of your own. Be the one who sing in a public place, be the one who starts that funny joke, be the one who dares to talk to that girl you see in a cafe shop. Don’t expect it to come true, make it come true yourself. Don’t expect a day to be fun, make it fun yourself. When you got this, you can turn a random normal Tuesday into the best day of your life, who knows, right? That’s life, that’s living in the real world.