humanity
If nothing else, travel opens your eyes to the colorful quilt that is humankind.
Reverse Culture Shock. Top Story - October 2018.
If you are unfamiliar with the term "culture shock," in brief it means the mental (and sometimes physical) reaction you feel against a new place unknown to you. For instance, you have never traveled to Thailand before and, like me, you decide to pack up all you own into one large bag and move there—selling one's car and using the proceeds to fund the unconventional decision. After arriving in the new place, seeing the new sights, sensing the incredible (and some rank) smells... the once lovely "newness" of the place begins to overwhelm you. Now, the sights irritate you, the smells make you sick, and the clamour of people speaking a language you don't know in environments which are completely foreign to you make you angry. Is this rational? Of course not. Is this avoidable? Well, probably not for most people; who knows, there could be a rare exception. Will the initial love and joy return? YES!
By Alexandra Mezeul6 years ago in Wander
Overnighting: Over and Out?
#Vanlife is a growth industry. Sales of motorhomes and camper vans have rocketed over the past five years as people decide to have a 'staycation' rather than book a holiday abroad. A motorhome means that you're ready to up and leave at any time, a spontaneity that can depend on the weather, your mood, the traffic.
By Miranda Diboll6 years ago in Wander
The Traveler's Pilgrimage
At the end of the day, there comes a point where every traveler's pilgrimage comes to an end. Every nomadic quest, every step, finds its way back home, to the place where it all began. The place where you once were, the place where you once existed before the entirety of the soul of the world reached out to pull you from a life that wasn’t authentically yours anymore.
By Tiffany Gray6 years ago in Wander
Encounters Under Polar Lights
A journalist is a strange creature: his or her senses are heightened by the prospect of encountering unusual, uncanny, better—odd expressions of human actions, which may or may not testify to the better side of human nature. He, and at this point, we shall simply agree that the gender inclusive ‘he or she’ should be implied in the use of the old-fashioned ‘he’ in order to make this narrative less cumbersome for the reader, is honed to seek out those oddities that have recently become the most precious currency for the media in the age of commodified sameness. For such a hyper curious journalist, Russia, and especially its outskirts (aptly called the Province – note the singular, as if, for a Russian, ‘province’ is not just a place, a part, or a region, but a country of its own), is a bottomless source of odd and, as this journalist believes, often touchingly human moments. Below I would like to present some of these odd moments taken from my travels to the Russian Far North.
By Martin Berg6 years ago in Wander
Yamagata
What I remember about Yamagata Prefecture the first time I drove into it was its striking resemblance to the appearance of its sister city of Boulder, Colorado in the USA. I knew Boulder well as it was where I went to college. It was while visiting Boulder three months previous to when I first peered into the valley of Yamagata that I first learned about Yamagata's relationship with Boulder. It was the late summer of 2011 when I drove my Daihatsu Move into the valley of Yamagata City. It had been a whirlwind of a summer. Just five months previous to that moment I had realized that my teaching time in Fukushima Prefecture was over. A nearby melted nuclear plant had sealed that fate. It had been triggered by a wave. It was a wave that took out one-third of the town where I had been teaching in the small coastal, countryside town of Naraha. Luckily, Naraha was a small little town and the third of the town that was removed that day was mostly farming fields. Some houses were lost and some lives were lost, but they were small in comparison to further north. I already wrote about this day. It's in one of those previous writings. So you can find it there. Life is so short and fragile, I learned that day.
By Sound And The Messenger6 years ago in Wander
My Blue Windbreaker
Have you ever done something that was so insanely out of your comfort zone but simultaneously felt so comfortable? September 15, 2017, directly after graduating high school, I decided I was going to set mark on what would be the beginning of a electrifying journey through London and South Africa, each place representing something very different for me, but all encompassing one big lesson of life. I learned that there are unusually magical feelings and emotions that can be bursted out of one’s inner self, through being in different environments and experience "newness." All of it made me more able to express something so true inside of me; something I had never felt comfortable nor confident enough to share with the world. London represented new weather, ideas, new people, and independence. South Africa was a longer period of blooming and pure love, where I learned what it was like to put my energy out into the world instead of focusing on myself; simultaneously having it feel so effortless to understand and accept who I was, as a unique form of human existence.
By Sophie Rose6 years ago in Wander
Journal Entries for Self Discovery - Day 3
Hello, and welcome to day three. If you're new, I might suggest going back to read my first two posts... or not. I am keeping a (public) journal to try the 30 days of self-discovery and giving my opinions on these entries just to give other people an idea of if they are actually helpful or not. Thank you again for following along! My quote for the day is; "To write means more than putting pretty words on a page; the act of writing is to share a part of your soul with the world."
By Michelle Schultz6 years ago in Wander
Signs You Grew Up in a Small Town
If you grew up in a small town, this one’s for you. Everybody knows everybody. Truth is, you’ve probably known most people in your town since kindergarten. Also, your parents are all friends, so there’s really no getting away with anything. Whenever you go to your local gas station or grocery store, you’re bound to see someone you know shopping there or working there. That’s just how it goes.
By Skyler Bennett6 years ago in Wander
Home Is Where the Heart Is...
You know the saying, “Home is where the heart is”? I’ve heard this saying a thousand times, but I never thought much of it until recently. After spending the last month backpacking around Europe and meeting up with travel mates from Australia along the way, I have gotten such a better and intimate understanding of this saying.
By Michaela Marcille6 years ago in Wander
6 Reasons You Should Travel
Many of us have grown up with dreams of seeing the world, experiencing different cultures, and meeting lots of people! Somehow, however, we get sidetracked by life and can often end up sacrificing our dreams in the pursuit of the mundane.
By Jordan Catto6 years ago in Wander
Planning for Florida
Here's the thing about deciding to travel. The need can hit you at any moment; and all of a sudden you've got this itch, and whenever you're driving to work this thought lingers in your mind. "I could leave right now," you think, "I could leave now and when I come back I'll be someone new..." Please don't follow this urge. As incredibly tempting as it is, please set a plan and wait until you have the money.
By Will Jackson6 years ago in Wander