Blog Two; Why We Travel

There's is a lot of reasons people have for traveling. Food, money, love, experience, sometimes simply just to say "Yeah, I've been there." Pico Iyer travels to seek inner happiness and discover ourselves, and forget ourselves. I came to this conclusion after reading his classic essay "Why We Travel." Here, Iyer stresses that by traveling we slow time down, and sometimes even fall in love. His thoughts on traveling and what it means to the human soul are quite moving and honest. I'd have to say that I agree almost completely with my reasons to travel. I travel to find something new about the place I am going and about myself. I travel to fall madly in love with something greater than myself. I travel because I love it and I'm happy when I travel. For the most part, my reasons and Iyer's reasons for travel align pretty darn perfectly with each other. We share the same thoughts of people and places and of the heart as well as what it gains from traveling. Iyer says "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places, but in seeing with new eyes." I believe that this means that it's not just about going to a new place, but it's about experiencing the new place. It's about going there to live and have faith in your love for what you are doing. It's not simply to go and look, but to see. To feel. To live. This relates to me and all the other students going on this trip in the way that we are not going just to look at Australia and New Zealand, but were are going to live there. We are going to experience the culture. We're going to learn there and appreciate what we were given the opportunity to do. Iyer also makes a huge point in his essay that "What gives value to travel is fear." This I agree with. We learn to appreciate and really our experience in our most critical times. Sure, anyone could go to Japan and stay at a five star hotel for a few weeks to visit Tokyo's kawaii shops or Sendai's beautiful parks. But the real adventure beings when you're just dropped off there. Where you're not sure what happens next. It's frightening...The rush of adrenaline you get when you experience that lovely feeling of fear. That's the key to appreciating your travel. You have to do something out of your comfort zone to gain an even better experience. The fulfilling sensation you get when you do something that the "normal you" wouldn't do is rewarding enough to change your whole travel experience. We can relate this information to our school's journey by perhaps taking risks that we wouldn't take here. Of course we aren't just going to be dropped off in the outback with the final words "Good luck guys! Find the fear!" But maybe even just for a short while we can leave our zone of preference and take a chance to make this experience memorable knowing that we did something amazing. Throughout his essay Iyer talks about being a human "carrier pigeon" to transport from one society to another with cultures and ideas. I agree with the fact that we should be responsible to share our knowledge and experience with others from different places. It's important to help a society grow and flourish with cultures and thoughts. We should be able to connect South Korea to Brazil by some way, shape, or form. This is one of the best ways to bring countries, societies, and people together. It helps us share ideas and similarities as well as make new friends and learn new things.  Many of Iyer's ideas throughout his essay were brilliant and well thought out, but my favorite quote of his is "For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitable travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we'd otherwise seldom have cause to visit." This explains how while we travel we have rushes of feelings and moods, and we go deep within ourselves. It also says that we feel this way and gain knowledge of ourselves this way because we travel. Traveling brings out unfamiliar expressions or ideas that we possibly could have never found any other way before. I love this quote because it's so true and meaningful to me. Even now as I'm typing this blog on my only night off, I can honestly say that I love this quote and I can understand it's thought and meaning as if I had said it myself. I'm actually excited to type my next blog, and am happy I have this opportunity. Thank you.

*The outback I pray that we will not be left at to "discover our fear!"

*The New Zealand culture I hope to learn about and spread to other areas of the world.

Blog One; The Beginning

Hello to all my fellow bloggers. My name is Madison. I'm a sophomore at North High School. There's not too much about me... I'm a vegetarian, I love sushi, my dream is to travel to South Korea, and I'd consider myself a fairly good student. I like to create music with my piano and research other cultures from all around the world.
I first signed up for this course mainly because I love New Zealand. How can you not love the country where Lord of the Rings was filmed?! Afrter I made it to the list of people going I realized that I actually was going to New Zealand and Australia. Everyday the feelings of excitement grew,and so did my thoughts about what was going to happen. I am completely aware that I signed up for this opportunity because I love to travel and learn new things, and meet new people, and eat new food, and experience different cultures that may not fit the standards of our society's norms. I'm so thankful for the chance to start making my dreams of traveling come true, and at such a young age.
I'm so happy to have the chance to travel abroad. I hope to learn all about a culture different from my own. I have only been taught what America teaches us all. But now, I'm given a chance to learn all about a different country, not just from research, but from (hopefully) a life changing experience. I would love to learn about the life and style of these foreign countries as well as the ways of the people and about the land itself. I hope to come back to Illinois with knowledge gained about these places that you may not be able to find online or in a textbook.
I'd like to be able to list some things that interest me about Australia and New Zealand, but I don't know how well I can. It's not just one interest. It's not just kangaroos or the Opera House. Yes, those things interest me, but it's everything else too! The people, the water, the sunsets, the accents, the style, the weather, the culture...heck I even want to know about the socks the people wear! I just want to know everything about these places. I'm interested about even the history...and I'm not much of a history fanatic. Specifically, I'll be interested in anything I'm taught or learn from this experience. I want to see the trees and the sky, because to me, even that is completely different from our trees and our sky.
I think learning about these places will of course improve my experience while I'm traveling. I think this is not just about learning how to fit in to a society and learning from that way, or knowing what I'll be doing and what to expect, but it's also the fact that I'll be so excited while studying, and every seconds makes me want to go there even more. I think that if I travel with this attitude that I'll be so happy to be traveling and the feeling of happiness with make everything seem "oh so wonderful." I'm thankful I'll be able to learn about these places because then I can be prepared and smart to avoid things that make my experience less pleasurable. These are some main reasons why it is so important to study about where you will be going before you travel. I'm sure it'll make the experience so much more lovely.

*This little guy looks cute and furry! I've heard that they are mean...Let sure hope not, because if I see one, it'll take a whole lot of self control to avoid petting one! ^_^ Hehehe.

*Oh goodness...Isn't New Zealand just beautiful?