Day 30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1.Discuss how your travel experiences have affected you as a student and a citizen of the world   

  

I feel like I’m running through life sometimes.

I want to travel—to explore. I’m greedy to hopscotch the globe, to visit every single place in the world.

I have what some might call a "travel bug". I want to go everywhere, to gaze on the beauty of every continent.

I need to see and know.

But I have to remind myself to come back to earth. I know life is not about scribbling down a long list of places I've visited or filling up my passport with exotic visas; it's about the experiences I have in my journeys.

I always want to achieve some result, to check countries off a list until they are all visited and spoken for. But the more I travel, the more I learn how crazy an idea it is to think that I can even attempt to see everything.

Because I think of my favorite moments, and realize they are not found waiting in the airport in the customs line to enter another country. My favorite moments include simply wandering down the street in a foreign place, or eating a delicious meal in a tiny restaurant tucked away in an alley, or laughing with my mother about some little thing, or attempting to converse in my mangled foreign languages with vendors selling ice cream or avocadoes on the street. 

Slowing down and relaxing about my travels reminds me of how I need to slow down in my studies. I tend to rush through work, completing my assignments as fast as I can, trying to reach some goal that I don’t yet understand. When I slow down, I can actually process what I am learning, think about how concepts really affect me. I can appreciate the journey much more.