“I beg young people to
travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack
and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind
blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be
careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re
going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture,
food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of
what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about, I’m
sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that
for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of
water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting
for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people- Americans and
Europeans- come back and go, “ohhhhh.” And the lightbulb goes on.” Henry
Rollins
I’m all for traveling, whether it is through studying
abroad, working abroad, gap years, volunteering, missions, or backpacking. They
are all different but they all involve leaving the comfort of home. I am lucky
to live during a time where traveling to the other side of the world is
possible and becoming more and more popular.
I first traveled abroad to Portugal when I was 12 with my
Oma and Opa to visit family from my Opa’s side. They showed me Lisbon and took
me to their beach house. I ate so much fish there that I didn’t eat it again
for two years after I came home.
Over my 13th birthday I went to Toronto with my
family. We visited Niagara Falls and stopped at every Cedar Fair amusement park
on the East Coast. I celebrated my birthday in the car as we drove home and at
the midnight premiere of Ratatouille.
The summer before my junior year of high school I went on a
mission to Quito, Ecuador with two people from my church, as well as a group
from another church, but no one that I knew well. I celebrated my 16th
birthday there by doing manual labor and getting my face shoved into my
birthday cake. I was told it was Ecuadorian tradition to take a bite out of the
cake but to this day I’m not sure whether that’s true or not.
Last summer I took a cruise to Grand Cayman and Cozumel,
Mexico. I went snorkeling, scuba diving, and rode in a yacht for the first time!
I also traveled to Holland last summer to visit a friend
that I met at my high school when she was a foreign exchange student. I went to
a 3-day music festival in Belgium that involved camping in a tent, endless rain,
mud halfway up my calves, and no shower. I also biked, for the first time in years, through the busy streets of Amsterdam.
After my Thailand journey, I hope to backpack through Europe
starting in Italy and staying in youth hostels. I also hope to take a trip to
Africa because I’d love to go on a safari. After I get my teaching degree I
want to teach abroad somewhere, even if it’s just for a summer, to experience
the education system outside of the United States and learn things to bring
back and implement in my own classroom at home.
Opportunities to travel are everywhere! Good stories come
from traveling, which creates good conversations. Traveling has helped me to
better connect with others, and make me a more global and well-rounded person.
While I don’t know who Tom Friedman is, I do know that no writer can describe
traveling in a way that makes the reader truly put oneself in that travel
destination. Part of what makes travelling so exciting is the newness of
everything. It doesn’t get old because each destination has a different feel
and culture.
Celebrating my 16th birthday in Quito
My first time scuba diving
Cozumel, Mexico
The muddy music festival in Belgium
Biking through Amsterdam
“No matter where or why you travel, there’s always something wonderfully new to be found.” Unknown
