Something Unexpected in Myanmar

The special course to Myanmar was my second special course, the first one was in Bali. I have noticed that special courses are never what you expect they would be, actually none of the courses of Manos sin Fronteras are what you would expect them to be.

It started out with me actually not wanting to go to this course, I made up so many excuses, not having the money, wanting to have a relaxing holiday, pretending not to be interested, etc. In the end I did go and it was a very good decision that I made.

In the first couple of days the course, it became clear to me that again this course was not what I expected. My expectation was to learn about the places that we visited, the culture of the locals and to enjoy the holiday. It was so much more. I did all that, but in a different way. For some reason your perception of things in these special courses is different to the one in every day life. You understand things differently and in my case I was a whole lot more understanding than I would be at home.

In the course sometimes people have specific sensations when they visit certain places, this has to do with certain connections one might have to the place or the energy that is present at the location. I did not have any sensations at any of the places that I visited, I have to admit, I was a little disappointed at the start, but as was explained to me later there is nothing wrong with not feeling anything at the places that you visit.

I personally believe that I came to the course to find out more about myself. I noticed that there are a lot of feelings and emotions that I have not dealt with from my past that also explain why I am how I am. There were a lot of personality traits that I found out about myself, a lot of them I did not like and I did not want to see them, even more I did not want to admit that I have so many issues and that in my own eyes I was doing everything right. It was not easy accepting these things about me, if I would not have come to the course I would have never found out about this, but it gives me something to work on.

Another part about this trip that I really enjoyed was that I got to meet a lot of people, which feels very strange as I write this down, because I usually like to stay by myself. There were some people that I met already 2 years ago, but it was not necessarily a friendship that formed at that time. Now that I met them for the second time there are certain people that I feel very connected to. It might have been the sharing of experiences or feelings that came up during our time together in Myanmar or the fact that we spent 10 days together, in any case I really like these people and I believe that the course forged this connection.

This experience might not have been what I imagined it to be or even what I wanted it to be, but it was what I needed it to be. I got to discover a lot of things about myself and it opened a lot of doors for me, personal doors, that I would have ignored otherwise. Also I got my relaxation, not in the sense of lying at the beach with a fresh coconut in my hand, but in the sense that I really got to disconnect from my reality, like my job, my family, my life and focus on myself for a change. This alone is already something that would make me do this trip again.