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.