At the top of Mt. Pilatus; Lucerne, Switzerland
“People don’t take trips . . . trips take people.”
John Steinbeck
A Collection of My Learning’s:
- People are people, wherever you go
– Each person has the same needs as I do (need for acceptance, belonging, to be apart of something bigger than themselves, need to be heard and understood)
– Everyone feels the same emotions as I do (happy, sad, frustrated, excited, stressed, curious, & the list goes on) - It’s fun meeting different people from other countries, ethnicities and cultures
– This experience has opened my mind to see how very different people are (how they think, the decisions they make, their personalities, values etc) and there really is no one exactly like me anywhere in the world
– Each of the 19 countries I visited had something different to offer; a distiguishing feature that separated one country from another & would leave a lasting impression on my memory - It was so fun always being on the move and seeing new sights and new places every day
– I thought this fast pace would overwhelm me, but I came to realize how much I enjoyed this as I got to see and do a million things a day for 42 straight days (Sound intense? That’s because it is!)
Bike riding in Amsterdam, Holland
- I needed downtime in order to go at this pace for an extended period of time (I craved “introvert time” – time to be alone by myself – to re-gain my energy in order to do it all over again the next day). I would do this by:
– Not always going out each night but having intentional “down time”
– Going to bed early on some nights
– Sleeping on the bus during travel days - Taking lots of pictures
– I took over 7,000 pictures on my point-&-shoot digital camera & have gone thru them all 3 times since returning home
– I have condensed them into smaller, more manageable amounts for my own and other people’s realistic viewing pleasures - I became a sponge and took everything in
– Via tour guides
– Watching other people/tourists and how they travel, sightsee & do things
– Asked lots of question’s (not to be annoying but because I am curious) - Kept a travel journal and wrote in it each day to record what I did/saw (see my last post, Europe – Part 3, for more on this)
– Did this so I would always have a written account of what I did for each day to be able to recall and re-live this experience anytime I want to
“Take only memories, leave only footprints.” – Chief Seattle
Guess where this is!
Dwight Van Middlesworth 