30 Lessons That Traveling Has Taught Me

One day I started thinking about how unbelievably valuable travel has been for the quality of my life and just how many lessons I've learned because of it.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are 30 lessons that traveling has taught me. Some are serious, some are silly, but all have had their own unique impact on my understanding of the beautiful, colorful world we live in!

1.   Living abroad can make even the most independent person completely dependent on others.

2.   Sometimes you just have to let go of your pride (especially if you’re someone who’s usually independent) and ask for help.

3.  No matter where you are or what culture you find yourself in, people need each other.

4.  When it comes to what people think of us, we tend to care less about what people from other cultures think than we do about people from our own culture. This can be both positive and negative.

5.  The honesty and imitative behavior of children tends to be a reflection of the values a society teaches to its members. 

6.  We all think people of ‘races’ other than our own ‘all look the same’…until we spend time living among them. 

7.  Traveling can shatter your materialistic desires. Less is more. Plus you come to realize how people with far less than you are far happier. 

8.  There are wonderful people everywhere. And there are people that suck everywhere. 

9.   Drinking milk in other parts of the world makes you realize the milk in the US doesn’t actually taste like milk.

10.   People everywhere really do want the same things: to be happy, to be healthy, and to be loved.

11.  Being in another country frees your spirit from the chains of conformity and social expectations, and you may find yourself doing things you never imagined you would do at home.

12.  Stereotypes of immigrants may exist for some slightly legitimate reason, but they are largely disproven once one visits the immigrant’s home country.

13.  Traveling makes you realize just how much you take for granted.

14.  Being in a place where you don’t know the language at all actually pushes you to be more extroverted; it’s the only way you’ll be able to get things done.

15.  Travel forces you to admit that ‘reality’ is simply one perspective. 

16.  You cannot truly understand how irresponsible your neglect of foreigners in your own country is until YOU become the foreigner in another country.

17.  A Lonely Planet guide book is NO substitute for talking to a traveler who has ‘been there, done that.’

18.  Traveling in non-Western countries makes it hard to ignore the unearned privileges of being white, which is a necessary lesson in humility. 

19.  Language barriers force you to connect with people beyond words, and often these connections can prove to be more powerful than those with people you can speak to. 

20.  Traveling forces you to question everything you’ve ever believed, and begins to shape new beliefs within you.

21.  Poor language skills may make individuals seem unintelligent, naïve, innocent; this is usually not the case.

22.  Non-Western peoples do not need to be ‘saved’ from their misery; they usually know more about joy than you may ever know.

23.  Picking your nose in public is perfectly acceptable in many parts of the world. 

24.  What they say is true; traveling and tourism really aren’t the same, even though there’s a bit of both involved in each.

25.  Travel mishaps provide excellent lessons in learning to go with the flow and accepting things you cannot change.

26.  Spontaneity and "I'll figure it out when I get there" can lead to the best traveling experiences, but sometimes this really does need to be balanced with planning (I've learned this the hard way).

27.  Taking part in another culture's traditions can make you realize that all the things you find so 'exciting' about home are actually quite boring.

28. Sometimes the real reason we leave home is, oddly enough, to escape ourselves. And traveling, oddly enough, makes this possible.

29.  While traveling may make you nostalgic for certain kinds of foods, hot showers, proper toilets, etc, the only things really missing when you're on the road are the people you wish you could share your adventure with.

30.  Traveling will completely alter you: your perceptions, your identity, your life.

     

China's Treatin' Me Well!

Life in China is going splendidly!  I feel like each new week brings more to be thankful for, and it is certainly safe to say that I love it!

Work. Work is going great. I really love my students.  They have become so much more open and willing to speak, and they are unbelievably creative.  Being an oral teacher rather than a grammar teacher definitely has its perks.  Rather than teach them boring rules, we get to do fun activities and have discussions on topics like tradition, festivals, culture, globalization, etc. I really challenge them in terms of their level of speaking abilities, and they consistently surprise me with their creativity and ability to think outside the box, even in a second language which they find so difficult. I’ve also started a second part time job. Through this I will be teaching both kindergarteners and adults; so all in all, I am now teaching pretty much every age group. I had class with the kindergarteners Saturday and it was SO much fun. They are unbelievably cute and they were so excited about the activities I had planned.  They could barely sit still in their seats because they were so anxious to get to the board and participate in the next activity. Next week we have three days of teaching off because of some sports events at school and a school field trip on Friday. And I’ve been asked to participate in a race during the sports events. Great. I have to compete against these incredibly fit Chinese people. I am going to look like a fat, American loser, haha. And I’m really excited about the school trip, although I am definitely curious as to how they plan to take 1000 students on a trip. It should be interesting, for sure.

Friends. Yay!!! I have friends! :) I have met some really great people in the last month and I feel so fortunate to know them. I am so glad to finally have solid people in my life!

Chinese. I am finally starting to learn some Chinese! A friend of mine has agreed to teach me, and we will have lessons twice a week. I’m not even attempting to learn characters at this point, but I really want to become conversational.  I know it will take time, and Chinese is obviously unlike any other language I know/have studied, but I’m hoping to catch on fairly quickly.

Transportation. This may sound odd, but I love public transport. I think growing up in SC, where you drive absolutely everywhere and there is no public transport, it took on a kind of exoticism in a way. As a child, buses, metros, taxis, etc have always reminded me of big, exciting U.S. cities or Europe, the kind of places I’ve always really seen myself being. And these things remind me of travel, because they have been the means of transportation in almost every place I’ve traveled, as opposed to driving. So, I have always had this secret (not so secret anymore) love of public transport. That being said, I love using public transport here. I know, it makes everything take so much longer and I may have to take an hour bus ride to travel 12 kilometers, but it doesn’t bother me at all; I absolutely love it. It’s oddly one of my favorite things about living here. Random weird fact #874.

There’s a bit of the last few weeks in a nutshell. I continue to love life, no matter where I am :)

Culture and Globalization, According to Chinese 11 Year Olds

So, sometimes I give my students discussion topics that are even hard for native English speakers to really put into words. But some of them really surprise me with how well they are able to articulate their thoughts, and even more so, some of them provide the cutest answers. This week we are working on culture and globalization. I provided them with the main arguments for and against globalization in terms of its impact on culture. They worked in groups to discuss whether or not they find globalization to be a good or bad thing, and then they had to present their opinions. I just really love to hear what they have to say, and I wanted to share these! Below are one of the responses in favor of globalization, and one response against it. I hope you smile :)

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I think the globalization is good. We can know something we don’t know in our area. For example, farmers don’t know about the seas and oceans because they can’t get there. If the globalization becomes true, farmers can know about seas and oceans and can even have seafood at lunch. Above all, the globalization will help us with better technology, more knowledge, and better ways to live. Somebody says globalization will make everybody the same. Actually, in some aspect it’s true. But if a country can’t keep its culture, the problem is in that country, not the globalization.

I think globalization is bad for some people of the world. For sure, we need our national culture. Because all of we humans do not looks all the same and at last, we speak different language, we eat different food, we sing different songs, and we do different exercises. If the globalization becoming more and more, what should we do? Can we Chinese sing songs from the West life or all of Justin [he is referring to Justin Beiber]? Can the American eat food with China every time? Can English drink tea but not coffee, juice? Can the old man who is from South Africa dance Disco? It’s impossible. So I think globalization is bad.

My White Privilege

Anyone who has taken graduate courses in the social sciences (and even those undergraduates who have had great teachers) has likely read Peggy McIntosh’s work on White Privilege.  If not, I highly recommend that you do so, no matter who you are or where you come from or what ‘race’ you identify with, her work is powerful and eye-opening. {I have included a link to one of her most well-known pieces below, and I strongly encourage you to read it}  

I shall preface this by saying I don’t believe in race.  Skin color, a phenotypic characteristic of an organism, in no way determines ‘race.’ In fact, it has been scientifically proven that race has absolutely no biological basis, race is not part of our genes or our DNA; race is not real. Rather, race is a social construction.  Race is a notion created by society.  But just because race may not be real, the consequences of society’s perception of it as so are very real.  So while I acknowledge that I am not, in fact, a ‘white’ person, I will refer to myself as such within this post, because society’s perception of me as a ‘white’ individual has very real consequences in the world we live in.

I have been fortunate enough to experience my white privilege from a multitude of perspectives in a variety of cultures.  I say fortunate not because of what I have been able to materially gain from these experiences, but I have been fortunate in regards to the struggle to gain wisdom as a human belonging to a multi-faceted, diverse, and interconnected world of beings. I grew up in the United States, a country still haunted by racism whether or not we wish to admit it.  As a white member of society, I enjoy a number of ‘invisible’ privileges that are not enjoyed by those who are not white (see Peggy McIntosh’s article below for some great examples). I have lived in Tanzania, where people constantly came to me in search of help and/or money, because I am white. I now live in China where I am offered far more money than the locals and am given various things for free, because I am white.  In Tanzania, people wished (and in most cases, needed) to gain something material from their association with me; in China, people wish to bestow something material upon me. In both cases, this occurs because I am white.

For the most part, those of us in positions of privilege are unaware of that privilege. Even if we do acknowledge it, we are afforded privileges on a daily basis which go unrecognized. Most people in America are taught to believe that they get where they are because they worked hard to get there. Wrong. Most people in America are where they are because someone else worked hard to get there, and you were born into a position of privilege which has allowed you to live the life you live because of someone else’s hard work. I know that I never could have led such an amazing life if I had had to really do everything on my own. I am where I am and I have had the experiences I have had because of the hard work of others and because of the support of those people as well. I don’t mean to say I have never worked hard, because I have (relatively speaking for a person of my position). But, can I call the work I’ve done ‘hard’ when I see the Mexican immigrant in my father’s restaurant who works 3 jobs at all hours of the day and night just to feed his son? Can I call the work I’ve done ‘hard’ when women in Tanzania spend 10 hours a day breaking stones into gravel by hand in the blistering sun? Can I call the work I’ve done ‘hard’ when one of my Tanzanian students worked 4 hours in the fields every morning, came to school, left school to go back to the fields until dark, and couldn’t even afford the 10 cent bread at lunch each day?

Recognizing our privilege can have many effects; it can be eye-opening, thought-provoking, guilt-inducing, but best of all, it can be humbling. That is where I have found the greatest reward in recognizing my privilege, in being humbled. Being humbled allows compassion to grow inside of us, and compassion opens the door for feelings of love toward other people. And there is no greater thing in this world than to live in love. Gandhi once said, “Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable." The greatest thing we can do with our life is to live in love; the greatest force which exists in this world is love, love that comes from the process of being humbled, love that is itself humble. Once we rid ourselves of the desire to yield power in the forms of position, wealth, fame, and superiority, and instead choose to yield power in the form of compassion and love, recognizing every one among us as one of us, only then can we create a world of unity and peace.

Peggy McIntosh- Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege

http://insightpv.org/storage/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Unpacking%20the%20Knapsack%20of%20White%20Privilege.pdf