Last month I spent nearly three weeks traveling through Morocco, and I'm still trying to process the experience.

Let me give you a few quick examples to illustrate how this trip challenged my conception of what “personal growth” means.

Personal growth

Morocco was beyond anything I've experienced before, and I've been an international traveler since my early twenties. We visited three cities and then went far out into the rural areas, spending extended periods of time with local families whose lives are so very different from my own. Our group included eight people in addition to a guide.

Just hours after we arrived in Morocco, two people in our group invited us to go to the medina. It's a narrow, walled section of town without cars, packed with people and filled with merchants hawking essentially everything that can be made with one's hands. In ancient times, some medinas were deliberately built to be narrow and winding, so as to slow down invaders.

New experience a mystery

In the medina, with mere hours of firsthand experience in Morocco, I knew nothing. There's a whole system regarding how you indicate to a merchant that you are interested in an item, and how you negotiate; this system was a mystery to me. I had previously been given warnings to beware of pickpockets, keep my possessions secure, and be very cautious. But how can you be cautious surrounded by a sea of people about whose customs and practices you know so little?