Being Mixed and Traveling the World

I was watching a Youtube video the other day from Buzzfeed about DNA testing. One of the men who did the test is mixed, and said something that really resonated with me, "I'm a mixed race guy. Sometimes you feel like you belong everywhere and sometimes you feel like you belong no where."

I've also taken DNA tests and confirmed what I always knew, that I was a mutt through and through. There's no one area of the world that I can claim and even culturally I was raised in a home that mixed Italian, German, Polish, English, and even sometimes Scandinavian or Latino traditions. Most places that I've been have held at least one reminder of home to me, some link to my ancestral heritage that makes me think that someone down the line must have been from there and passed on the tradition until it got to me.

Appearance is one of those double edged swords of traveling. A lot of people worry about sticking out in new countries - for blondes it may be unwanted attention in India and for black people it may be unwanted attention in Asia. I've found being mixed to be the greatest gift in this regard. I may not fit in here at home with other Latinos because I'm not Hispanic enough but in Mexico the sales people ignored me because they thought I was too Hispanic to fool into buying their timeshare pitch. In Norway they thought I was just another Norwegian immigrant. Even in Japan no one looked twice at me, even though I was ignored plenty of times for being a woman by older people.

So while I may not be even genetically linked to any of the places I visit, I have never felt out of place either.