Memories Imprinted on Objects

    Vision trip. The field trip that envisions minds of students. The one that, hopefully, leads students to have the visions about their futures. Meetings with KMLA graduates from different universities to hear about the campus lives. Learning different cultures and bearing international minds. Nights at big fancy hotels. Big sandwiches. Tall modern buildings. Streets full of liveliness and, inevitably, huge crowds of people.   They were what the America vision trip was about. One more thing to add, though.
    Shopping for the souvenirs. It all started from university bookstores. During the short break time after the campus tour, my friends and I ran into the shop to look around what they had. At first, I had not even had any ideas on what they would sell. Nor had I thought I would spend much money in the shop. Soon afterwards, they turned out to be one of the coolest places that you could expect to go. After having been to different university ‘book stores’, I realized the true value of university book stores were in the souvenirs and university hoodies they had, not so much in the actual books they sold. 
     It was not only the university shops we explored. We got into different shops, ranging from the one in old brick house covered in ivy trees, and the one in stylish modern building with big glass windows. We were absolutely stunned after experiencing different civilization and exotic scent of America in the shops. Meaning, we were willing to open our purses with excitement. Some of us ran and crammed in there, making a very long queue to buy another ‘cool’ things to bring home. 
    It was rather amazing how one could spend vast amount of time in choosing what to buy. I even spent about thirty minutes in the sea-shell shops, deep in thought of which one to choose between the literally same looking sea shells, according to my friends. One of them actually asked me why I would buy those ‘meaningless objects’ without any practical uses. After all, she added, they were going to be sitting on my table in the end anyways. I looked into my bag. Hand drawn post cards bought at streets in New York, small so-ju cup with the writing ‘I love Boston’, different collection of pens from different universities, pretty sea shells bought near the sea shore, a small doll bought at Time Square and so on. They were a kind of things which only had meanings because they were souvenirs. If I were to buy them around my hometown, I would have hesitated.  
   I guess the point my friend was true, to certain extent. However, the true meaning of those things was not in their materialistic values or usefulness. Not so much in their prices or fame. It was in the stories they contained.   All objects contain stories within themselves to tell. Their sole existence seemed to be a story itself, in the way that archaeologists tell a story about mysterious drawings from medieval ages. The souvenirs. They may appear a bit silly and sometimes, just useless. However, they were collection of different stories. Objects with memories imprinted on them.  Captured scents of enjoyable moments. Actually, they were like keys that could lead us back to the past experience, to the time we spent in America. 
   On our last day, with bag full of clothes, souvenirs and a bit more memories on top of them, we left the airport.