Travel: Learning from Experience

Education comes in many packages. It can come online or offline. It can be experienced by young and old alike. Learning can take place in a classroom, in a board room, or even on a cruise ship. Life experiences offer the student one of the best packages of education available on the planet. And, of those life experiences, TRAVEL offers the biggest bang for the buck.

Even a short road trip to another state can open one's eyes to natural beauty en route, sites of historical significance, differences in state laws, nuances of regional culture, and even lessons of regional geography. Where else, and HOW else, could you learn SO much in so little time?

Keeping a journal on the way often helps the traveler to learn little things about themselves, as well. By writing down your thoughts and feelings, you can capture the lessons that you see, hear, and feel along the way to be savored later on when the days are dull and dreary back home. And, thus, you learn that a simple journal or photographs taken en route can give your inroads to understanding yourself, your likes and dislikes which might have gone unnoticed otherwise. Even a child can keep such a travelogue ... for children too young to write, try asking them to draw different aspects of their trip along the way to get them thinking about what they are seeing and to help them express themselves in a creative way about sights and sounds that are new to them.

For international travelers, the lessons are the greatest. All of the above lessons are available to them with a plethora of other lessons, as well. Taking that first step to cross the ocean by plane or boat is an adventure that teaches one to expand their horizons and to break the boundaries that restict them to one land, one country, one set way of thinking and doing things.

International travel awakens the soul with favorings of different cultures, seeing first-hand how different people do things in different lands. While this experience is thrilling even for adults, children gain the greatest insights during international exploration as it will help to establish their understanding from very young that differences among people and cultures can be quite exciting and wonderful in its own way. Even just tasting the various foods of the different cultures tickles the taste buds into a whole new world of cuisine art. Fashion, art, science, transportation, religion, geography, geology, social studies are all areas of learning outside of the books when traveling abroad. There is no other way, again, that so much information can be imparted in so short a time.

Depending on your attitude, you can learn more from travel than from any single educational experience on the planet. If you have the mind set to ignore everything you see, then surely you will learn nothing at all (through travel, or otherwise). BUT, if you have the curiosity to seek out the information available to you through the advantages of traveling from one state to another, or one country to another, then you have the best possible source of education that time can allow. And, with the right attitude, you can learn more from IT than any course you take on this planet! Bon voyage!