For the past few months, my family and I have traveled around the globe. When we had just started our trip, just after selling our previous home, I felt a mixture of two emotions: excitement and nervousness. We had already spent a year during COVID-19 traveling around America in a small RV but we had never traveled on this large of a scale before. As some might expect, there have been a lot of surprises along the way.
One thing that I would have never even considered is how tiring it could become after a time. It can get hard to focus on the places you are visiting and simultaneously focus on school. One example of this is during Spain when our sleeping habits were completely ruined. This is because, in Spain, everyone would wake up late and sleep late and as a result, restaurants would open later than usual so we would have to do the same. This obviously affected my schedule and for a while, I slowly started to get more and more behind, so as a result, once I was in Portugal, I had to dedicate a few days to cram in all of the work that I wasn’t able to complete. If you don’t want this happening to you, I recommend traveling slowly or re-searching up ahead about things like the local’s sleeping habits, etcetera.
Nevertheless, traveling can still offer great opportunities that you couldn’t have done if you were staying at home all day. For one, we can start to see differences between all of the countries that we have visited and get a really good sense of what this world is like. For example, I noticed that the roads in Spain turn frequently so that they keep you interested and make you want to explore, while places like Paris have long boulevards that stretch on for miles which give it a really grand feel. If I had never gone to these countries, I probably would have still thought French people to be a bunch of baguette-wielding people who have curly mustaches and stripy t-shirts and strange flat hats. As you can see, being able to actually be there to experience things yourself allows you to get a deep sense of what all of the countries are like, and if you pay close enough attention you can even start to notice small differences between the places you visit.
Another plus to traveling is that you can also talk with the locals and learn a lot about their lives. For example, some countries might have bad stereotypes and in this case, rude Italians. While I was in Italy, we were nearly in a car crash many times because of the psychopaths around us. They would honk, overtake on both sides, not single, and even tailgate you if you aren’t going fast enough. So I wouldn’t judge you if you think that Italians are rude and exceedingly impatient but in truth, this couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I learned recently that they can actually be helpful and funny if you just sit down and have a chat. It’s as if they become an entirely different person once they step out of their cars. That is why taking the time to talk with locals can really change your perspective about the country and its people, along with creating fond memories that will stick with you for the rest of your trip.
While traveling can get tough at times, it opens up a lot of opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible if you were to stay at home all day. For one, it allows you to get to experience everything first-hand, so the things that you see would stick in your head much longer. You can also talk to the locals and learn a lot about their lives while also making great memories that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Traveling also helps you remove any of the previous misconceptions that you would have had about a country or area, which opens your eyes and makes you see everything around you differently. This is why if you have time, I strongly recommend that you go out and explore the world.