What World Cup Tourists Taught Me About Coming Home
I woke up recently from a dream about Europeans visiting America. That is probably not a sentence I expected to write after returning from Tokyo and Busan.
The dream wasn’t entirely random. For the past several days, I’ve been watching videos of World Cup tourists experiencing American culture for the first time. I’ve watched people react to American barbecue, giant grocery stores, national parks, wide roads, neighborhoods, and everyday things that most Americans barely think about anymore.
What surprised me wasn’t that they enjoyed America. It was how much I enjoyed watching them enjoy America.
The United States has been going through a rough patch lately, politically and culturally. Depending on where you look online, it can feel like every conversation revolves around what is broken, what is wrong, and what needs fixing.
Then I found myself watching visitors arrive with fresh eyes which makes a difference.
A few days before, I had been the visitor myself. I was wandering through Tokyo and Busan, trying to figure out train stations, paying attention to signs, studying maps, and getting excited over things locals probably walked past without a second thought.
Then I came home. Somehow a British tourist eating barbecue helped me see America differently.
The Word That Stayed With Me
One particular video featured a British visitor describing an American barbecue experience as “elevating.”
I loved that word.
I’ve heard people describe food as delicious, incredible, worth the trip, or life-changing. But elevating felt different.
It suggested that something larger had happened.
The barbecue wasn’t just a meal. Somehow it had become an experience. A moment of appreciation. A reminder that something ordinary could still feel special.
The word stayed with me.
The more videos I watched, the more I realized I wasn’t really watching them because of the food.
I was watching because of the perspective.
What Travelers See
While walking through Kagurazaka with my local Japanese friend, I found myself admiring everything.
The bakeries.
The coffee shops.
The bookstores.
The narrow alleyways tucked between buildings.
The rhythm of the neighborhood felt different from Los Angeles, and I loved paying attention to it.
At one point, it occurred to me that the people who lived there probably weren’t standing around admiring the alleyways.
They were probably thinking about work.
Dinner.
Groceries.
Whether they remembered to pay a bill.
What felt extraordinary to me was simply everyday life to someone else.
The same thing happened in Busan.
I was studying subway maps and trying to understand where I was going. Meanwhile, thousands of people around me were simply commuting to work, meeting friends, or heading home after a long day.
Travelers notice things locals stop seeing.
When the Roles Reversed
When I returned home, something unexpected happened.
The roles reversed.
Instead of me being the visitor, I was the local. And these World Cup tourists were doing to America exactly what I had been doing to Japan and Korea. They were noticing things I had stopped noticing.
The wide roads.
The diversity of people.
The abundance of food.
The friendliness of strangers.
The sheer scale of everything.
Nothing had changed.
America was exactly the same country it had been before I left. The difference was that I was temporarily borrowing someone else’s eyes.
Marcel Proust captured this beautifully when he wrote:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
The visitors weren’t showing me a different America. They were helping me see the same America differently.
Wonder Begins With Attention
One of my favorite passages in Scripture begins with observation.
Psalm 8:3-4 says:
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?”
The verse begins with attention.
When I consider.
When I notice.
When I look.
Wonder often starts there.
Not with something new.
But with paying attention to something familiar.
I think that’s part of what I was seeing in those videos.
The visitors weren’t discovering things that Americans had never seen before.
They were simply noticing things many of us had stopped noticing.
Gratitude and Honesty Can Live Together
One of the things I appreciated most about these videos was that they reminded me that gratitude and honesty can exist together.
America is not perfect.
No country is.
Japan isn’t.
Korea isn’t.
America isn’t.
Acknowledging problems does not require us to become blind to blessings.
In fact, I think maturity requires holding both.
Seeing what needs improvement while also appreciating what is good.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has made everything beautiful in its time.”
Not perfect.
Beautiful.
There is a difference.
Beauty often exists alongside imperfections.
Author Anaïs Nin once wrote:
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Maybe that’s why two people can look at the same place and come away with completely different experiences.
Perspective matters.
Travel Followed Me Home
People often describe travel as an opportunity to see new places. I wonder if one of its greatest gifts is learning how to see familiar places again.
Tokyo and Busan taught me to pay attention. Unexpectedly, a group of international visitors helped me continue that lesson after I returned to Los Angeles. Their excitement became an invitation.
Look again.
Notice again.
Appreciate again.
Philippians 4:8 encourages us to think about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.
I’ve often interpreted that verse as a reminder about attention. Where we place our spotlight matters.
Reality contains more information than any of us can process. We are constantly choosing what to notice. These visitors were noticing beauty.
Opportunity.
Discovery.
Hospitality.
Not because challenges didn’t exist. But because those were the things they chose to pay attention to. In doing so, they reminded me to widen my own spotlight.
Soul Insights
1. Familiarity Can Hide Beauty
The longer we live with something, the easier it becomes to overlook it. Familiarity helps us move through life efficiently, but it can also dull our sense of wonder. The streets we drive every day, the neighborhoods we call home, and the routines we repeat can slowly fade into the background. Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind us that what feels ordinary to us may be remarkable to someone else. Gratitude often begins with looking again.
2. Travel Changes More Than Geography
Most people think travel changes us because we see new places. I think it changes us because it teaches us how to observe. We learn to slow down, pay attention, and become curious. The habits of attentiveness we develop while traveling can follow us home if we let them. The destination may end, but the perspective doesn’t have to.
3. Wonder Is Available Everywhere
We often assume wonder lives somewhere else. Another country. Another city. Another season of life. Yet Scripture repeatedly invites us to notice God’s fingerprints in the world around us. Sometimes wonder isn’t hiding in distant places. Sometimes it’s waiting in familiar places we’ve stopped paying attention to.
4. Perspective Is a Gift
Watching these visitors reminded me how valuable borrowed perspectives can be. Their excitement revealed things I had overlooked. Their curiosity reminded me not to become complacent. Sometimes growth happens when we temporarily step outside our own viewpoint and see through someone else’s eyes.
5. Gratitude Expands What We Notice
Gratitude does not deny problems. It simply refuses to let problems become the entire story. The more grateful we become, the wider our field of vision grows. We begin to notice blessings that were always present but previously hidden by routine, frustration, or familiarity. Gratitude doesn’t change reality. It changes how much of reality we see.
Final Thoughts
The dream I had about Europeans enjoying America was probably inspired by all those videos. I think it reflected something deeper too.
Encouragement.
Hope.
Gratitude.
A reminder that familiar things still contain wonder.
The videos were never really about barbecue. At least not for me. They became a reminder that sometimes the greatest gift of travel is not what happens when you leave home.
Sometimes the greatest gift is what happens when you come back. You return with fresh eyes. Suddenly, the ordinary becomes visible again. That feels pretty elevating.
Your Turn
Take a walk through a place you know well this week.
Your neighborhood.
Your city.
Your favorite coffee shop.
Your daily commute.
Pretend you are seeing it for the first time.
What do you notice?
What have you overlooked?
You may discover that the world around you hasn’t changed at all. You’ve simply learned to see it differently.
© 2026 Amelie Chambord
Soul Path Insights 
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