Around-the-World Wrap-Up

This trip was a blast, but I also learned a lot taking it. The things I learned, however, were not the types of things that you learn in a classroom, but rather were the type of things that you can only learn by being somewhere and experiencing a place, supplementing formal education rather than being a substitute.

While some of the places I visited seemed quite different from home and naturally quite foreign nothing that I saw was really that different than I or any rational person would do if they lived in the same place and operated under the same laws and economic conditions as the people in the countries I visited. Its amazing nonetheless how many different sets of laws and economic conditions people live under.

If you’ve read all or some of what I’ve written and are now thinking about how you take a similar trip, please don’t hesitate to ask me for advice. The truth is that its not really that hard to do. You just need to be courageous enough to decide that you want to do it and there are ways in almost every American’s life to find the time and financial resources necessary to do it. One suggestion that I think is important to make, however, is to travel alone since while I was a little hesitant of doing so to start out with, it made my experience a lot better in many places as I was able to interact with local people in ways that I was not able to during the portions of the trip when I was traveling with other people.

Still to come (in the next few days of when/if I have time):
1) Pictures
2) The trip by the numbers
3) “Best of” list from the trip