The Places We Live

There is much to be said about living overseas or in new areas. For someone who has never traveled, it may seem uncomfortable to leave behind all of the things which you are familiar with and try to adopt new ideas and principles. It is hard for me to imagine that there are people who have never left the city that they were born in. I feel that it is necessary, at least for some time in your life, to leave an area for a lengthy amount of time to gain some perspective.

Some people think that it would be nice to travel, but it isn't necessary. I've heard people tell me that and also say that with the internet, you can get just as much out of staying home and just studying. Having lived in both Asia and Europe for some time, let me tell you that there is nothing better than experiencing these things for yourself, to interact with the culture rather than looking at it.

One of the problems that I have seen in conversing with people is a limited scope. Even when I've been traveling with people, they sometimes expect that people will have the same mannerisms that they have grown up with. This culture shock can be sometimes embarrassing to watch. But there are times when it is nice to see people helping each other.

One time I was traveling to Belgium with a group of guys that I had learned Dutch with. We felt pretty confident with the language in general, but there was still room for a lot of improvement. When we left from Atlanta to Brussels, we were filled with excitement, and having a background in french I was able to interpret the intercom announcement; however, when the dutch intercom came on all of us looked at each other with no idea what was being said. The Flemish dialect was so different that we couldn't catch a single word except "Good day" and that was it. We laughed a little to ourselves and began to relax. After a little while, we heard one of the guys that we studied with trying to talk to the people around him. We kept hearing the word "Vacuum" over and over again and we were trying to figure out what was going on. When we looked over, there was a large group of people helping him with pronunciation and just having a good time.

There are so many things to experience within a culture that you can't get elsewhere. Traveling allows you to expand your vision and re-experience the process of adaptation. This is a real-life lesson which we should all experience and if you have the time, I would recommend taking the opportunity to go just about anywhere. You never know what kind of experiences that you can have.