Guatemala : After

My trip to Guatemala taught me many practical things such as how to travel smartly in a foreign country and to be more confident in my ability to speak in Spanish. More importantly however, Guatemala taught me the value of direct cultural immersion, the new points of view and understanding about the world and its people that one can learn, and a richness and appreciation for the uniqueness of a culture that can be so different and so similar to my own. This trip affected me because it let me see just how much I thought I knew about the world. It opened my eyes just that bit more to what life has to offer for me and for everyone who is wiling to simply lose themselves so that they can find themselves, better than they were before =^. .^=

Guatemala : During Part II

The other aspect of the trip which also had a profound effect of me was the cultural side. While I gained many cultural insights into the Guatemalan people, I still feel, even now, that my experience was different because I was a tourist, a student, and an American. The scale of these realizations wouldn't fully hit me until I traveled later to Cuba. Because I was much more immersed in the culture there, I gained a completely new perspective from the people. But that is for another post later :) Nonetheless, these cultural insights (or shocks rather) still taught me a lot about how different the world can be. Speaking bluntly, the degrees of poverty that I saw in Guatemala were simply more frequent that what I was accustomed to seeing in the US. It wasn't that I was culturally ignorant or that I didn't understand my standards of living in comparison to theirs, but the reality of it was something I hadn't truly realized. It was a cultural awareness I had not reached, a sociological mindfulness that I now treasure becuase I saw it first hand.
While I was in Guatemala, I also gained an appreciation for hand-crafts. Maybe this appreciation grew because I actually met the creators of these crafts and I saw how skillful they were, or maybe it was the incredible simplicity and beauty of the crafts. Nonetheless, and as a reminder of this tip, I purchased a wallet. I still use this wallet and in this wallet I still have the strip of tape that has the name of my wallet's maker, Julia. My wallet and my memories of Guatemala and what I learned from the culture and the people there remain important to me. Basically, I can know that a culture is unique but I cannot understand what that means until I experience it myself. Guatemala proved to me that the experience of learning about cultures is truly an eye-opening and amazing phenomenon, wherever you go and from whomever you meet =^. .^=

Guatemala : During Part I

I was in Guatemala for about a week during over the Thanksgiving Holiday. In that time, I improved my Spanish skills (through just interacting with citizens and through help from my Spanish tutor), visited several tourist spots (including Mayan ruins and a volcano), painted a mural at a child-care center, and explored the city of Antigua. What initially caught me off guard was the language barrier, as I had somewhat expected it would. It was my first real time being immersed in another culture where English was not the first language and communicating even basic things became all the more difficult and all the more important. Example: when I got locked out of my room three times because I forgot my key. The first time I just climbed in through the window, which is not sketchy right? The second time I just waited till my roommate got back and tail-gated in with her. By the third time however, I mustered up the courage and the minimal language confidence I had to ask the manager of the hotel for the spare key. It was nerve racking, but I was very glad I went ahead and asked. The manager was very sweet and from that simple interaction, I gained a lot more confidence to speak to others during the trip. This helped me later when I spoke to the tour guides at the Mayan ruins in Tikal National Park and at the Pacaya Volcano. I was able to learn a lot more about the Mayan civilization and the Volcano, which had a profound effect on me because I was simply able to be there and stand next to these massive things that contained so much history and I knew beyond a doubt that they were real. The simple experience of being in a place where these things were real was so incredible. I could truly see then how diverse, exciting, and frankly cool the world is. This excitement about being in Guatemala remained with me and continued to grow far after I returned home =^. .^=

Guatemala: Before

My first international trip was to Antigua, Guatemala my sophomore year of high school. Although I'd traveled before, those travels were all road trips to different states in the US. As interesting and culturally revealing as those in-country trips were, I was really looking forward to this particular trip because it was my first trip abroad. Even before I landed in Guatemala City, I experienced many differences between this trip and the traveling I had previously done. One of the first things that I experienced was simply the different atmosphere of the trip. I had always traveled with family members or friends on trips that weren't thousands of miles away. Furthermore, I had simply never traveled that far from home before. Those two aspects when combined with the more academic nature of this trip set a very different tone for me. This tone affected me because it felt a lot more serious than trips in the past. This seriousness was reflected in the differences in packing (with a passport carrier stowed on my person), the precautions we received about the country (not to drink out of the faucets), and the academic nature of this trip (we took Spanish lessons every morning at a local school). Despite these differences, I was still excited to go because it simply was an opportunity to see a different part of the world and to see just how little I knew about the world. With all of these things on my mind, I boarded the airplane with loads of excitement and mild trepidation, hoping for the best yet only having an inkling of how much this trip would change me. It was my first step outside the US, but more importantly it was my first major step into the the world of international travel and cross-cultural understanding. =^. .^=

Road Trips

My first experiences with traveling were in-country travel. I have been to many states (I believe about 16) across the US as a tourist, mission worker, family member, or student. One of the things I grew to appreciate about the US was the diversity I found, the beauty of the country, and the history that we have within our own nation. I know I've been to a fraction of the places to visit and done fractions less of all the interesting things to do, but I can safely say that my foundation in traveling within my own country has ignited in me a desire to travel abroad. I realize that travel abroad is much different and that the US is comparatively an infant to other civilizations in the world, but I have learned some interesting things about my own culture as I have traveled in the States. These cultural insights burgeoned from forests of Acadia National Park in Maine, were carved from the stone of the White House, homegrown from the marshes of South Carolina, were warmed from the hot sun of Texas, and even brought to life from the halls of my own state's capital (15 minutes from my house, mind you). With each new aspect of my culture, I realize many important things. Each insight helps me understand the world I have grown up in, how that world has affected me, and maybe a bit more about the unanswered questions of life. I look forward to international travel for all the new lessons I will learn and the experiences I will have, but there will always be a part of me connected to the States for good or for ill. After all, I am traveling with a US Passport =^. .^=

Clarification

Sorry guys if I caught you off guard with my first post. I kinda got lost in my head ^.^* I guess those questions I posed to myself and to you were just the tip of the iceberg about things I wish I knew about the world and the beginning of me learning the answers to them. As you can probably tell, I love the diversity, randomness, and sheer variety of things life has to show me and I hope to cover but half of what it can show me in my life time (unless they can come up with a way to reduce aging). I digress, so moving on to the actual purpose of this blog, I believe the best way to answer those questions is to simply learn as much as I can through other cultures and my own. If I can broaden my horizons, and learn with an open-mind then maybe I can contribute something more meaningful to the world. Amassing this knowledge base is only half the battle though, what I do with it is the other half. So for now, while I'm going to keep documenting my experiences with traveling and cross-cultural awareness, I hope to add to my experiences as I Study Abroad. Someday though, I hope to be able to apply this knowledge, but as to when, what for, why, and how, I've no clue. Considering all that life can offer though, I'm sure I'll find something =^. .^=

Why?

I live in the 21st Century. I have a microwave and access to the Internet. Do I need to leave my room? Can I tell you what the latest news update is on the tragedy in Japan? What is the population of Tuvalu? Do I know about the politics of Uganda? How many acres of the Amazon will disappear by the time I finish posting this? Why is there this Colonial proverb: "You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats."? Just how interdependent are the economies of the world? What will happen to the workers in my state if the new Super WalMart doesn't open up a quarter of a mile from the Blue Ridge Parkway? Why is there a Communist Theme Park in Lithuania? What do I know about Operation Enduring Freedom? Why does copper make fireworks blue? Why is it that I can correctly spell and name all of the original 150 Pokemon in a game of Sporcle but I cannot tell you when or how to grow a carrot? Can I file my taxes by myself? Was Carlos V correct when he said that English is the language of business, German the language of horses and war, French the language of love, Italian the language of music and birds, and Spanish the language of God? ... Just some questions to think about I suppose. After all, it's not like I'm going to leave my room when I have the Internet. EXCUSES.  =^. .^=