Ecuador 2011

I did a study abroad in Ecuador through COST (Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching). I spent three months teaching at a private school in Quito. Yes, they spoke English. The school consisted of two sections, a national and an international. I was in the international middle school. There the students had almost all native English speakers as teachers. The students were bilingual; sometimes they even spoke three or more languages!

Fortunately for you I wrote a blog as I was experiencing the wonderful country of Ecuador. Now I don’t have to try to remember all the details over three years later.

Here is the link to my Ecuador travels (including the Amazon Basin and the Galapagos!): Click Me!

Check out the baby marine iguanas in the picture below. They blend in so well with the lava rock :) Also, I am rockin' mis "gafitas de Barbie." 

Family Vacations: Age 12 & under

I was fortunate enough to have a family which loves to bond through vacations. We have gone to various beach locations. For instance my mom used to love packing up the car with my grandmother, my older brother, myself, all our beach stuff, and plenty of VHS tapes to play on out 13” TV from our kitchen and heading 8 hours south to St. Augustine, Florida. Honestly, I think she only loved the St. Augustine part and maybe not the other parts. We took this voyage at least five different summers.

My dad on the other hand had a bit bigger budget and was able to take my step-brother, half-sister, brother, myself, step-mother, and sometimes even a friend or two to various beaches in Florida.  One year we went on a Disney Cruise through the Caribbean. Not too long after that we all headed to a Club Med in southwestern Mexico.

Then another year or two after that we got my dad’s siblings involved. My dad has a twin brother and a sister who lived out west. So my step-mother, dad, brother, step-brother, half-sister, my two cousins, my aunt and uncle, and I all flew out to Colorado one summer. There we met up with my other aunt and uncle and rented an RV. We drove from Denver to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. I don’t remember how long we were gone. I do remember seeing Old Faithful, buffalo, and going to a rodeo. Then there are various other shenanigans which happen when you take kids from early high school age down to toddler age to stay at RV campsites. One of my favorite parts of the trip was when we took a trail ride along a mountain trail and saw some amazing land features. The best part for one of my aunts was during that ride we literally saw a deer and antelope running alongside one another. “Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play…”

Of course as we kids grew up and got our own lives we began to take more vacations with other people’s families and less with our own. Other parents and siblings seem to always be way cooler, except when they are in-laws (unless you have amazing in-laws like I do, obviously). Now we wait for holidays to roll around before getting together.

These were the days before digital cameras and definitely before camera phones. Remember those days? Yeah, me neither.

Umm, What?

Needless to say, traveling can be fun, adventurous, and mysterious. One aspect of travel that adds much mystery is language. During middle school and high school I had studied Spanish and a little French. While in Russia after I graduated high school all that studying and practice was useless. Every written, spoken, even unspoken word made me feel so isolated but as much as it pushed me out of my comfort zone, the curiosity of it all it pulled me right back in. I was so intrigued by this world or words and body language I did not know or understand. Of course after the trip when I went to college I immediately enrolled in elementary Russian courses.

Foreign language can add much unneeded discomfort to a trip. There are the obvious reasons such as getting lost more easily and the emergency status of not knowing how to locate a bathroom. However, understanding the language can help you not only avoid those situations but can also open a window into that place's culture.

Many of you may have heard how the Inuits have numerous words for "snow." That's a pretty obvious example of how language reflects the culture. What's better is words that their meaning and history can explain the mindset of a people. In Russia to say "to marry" is "жениться" (zhenit'sya). "Woman" is "женщина" (zhenshchina) while "behind" is "за" (za). So you can see how "to marry" in Russian came from "the woman behind." This comes from the longtime belief of the woman standing behind her man and the man being in control. *I learned this example from my Russian language professor who was Russian herself.

I'm not trying to say words such as compound nouns illuminate a society. I'm saying understanding words and how, why, when, and who uses them can help give a foreigner a leg up on not feeling, well, so foreign.

Here is a link to another blog I found via Pinterest that takes a more linguistic view on the subject: Click Me!
(the site is also where I found the picture)

Chance Meetings

One of the major perks of travel is making those chance acquaintances. These are the best kind of people to meet. They are either like-minded adventurist or simply the person fate brings you to meet to share an intimate moment. The worst part of these meetings is social media. Yes, it can help keep you connected, but let's be real for a second.  It's so rare to have a real relationship after that vacation or study abroad or solo trip to the Galapagos. It's best to leave these meetings to what they are, chance.

I had my first when I was 14 in Disney World. The week before I left I dreamed of a boy I had never met. I know science claims this to be impossible, but go with me for a second. That next week I met him in an arcade in Orlando. He lived in Boston. We somehow ran into each other again before leaving the resort and traded instant messenger names. We are still Facebook friends today. We don't talk. 

The next time was when I was 22 and alone in the Galápagos Islands. I had run into a young man on the island of Santa Cruz and we had a very brief conversion. I learned both of our English skills were stronger than our Spanish, him being Brazilian and me American. Then on  the island of San Cristobal I saw him again and we climbed together to the top of a deserted lighthouse and watched the sunset. Being both from the east coast of our respective countries, we had never seen the sunset over the ocean. Afterward he walked me back to my hotel and told me about how evolution and creationism go hand-in-hand. I only leaned his first name, occupation, and the city where he works in Brazil. Neither of us asked for our numbers or Facebook names or anything. Somehow that would cheapen the experience. He will be immortalized in my memory as the man who made me realize faith and science can work together. I don't need to see his latest profile picture to remember that connection.

These meaningful meetings happen so rarely in today's world. We claim to be so "connected" but we aren't. It's all a facade. Thankfully we have travel to help bond us and have us share these experiences of new adventures. Please don't take this as advice to not make friends with anyone you meet along your travels. Honestly, sometimes those are the best relationships you can have. I'm talking about those fleeting moments you share with people from outside your typical world become so much less valuable when you observe their life from a computer screen. Whatever you read into these chance meetings is up to you. But sometimes it's better to leave them deeper than the face value of Facebook. 

First Leg of the (blogging) Journey

Traveling is the best thing I can do with my time. I know that sounds awful, but honestly, I do spend way too much time watching Netflix. Okay, I have a job as a teacher so you could argue that the best thing I do with my time is molding the minds of future generations. That is very important, but what would make me a better teacher than actually going to the places I teach about? I am a social studies teacher after all!

My goal is to travel internationally at least once a year. All the domestic places I get to visit are a bonus. Below are maps of where I have been so far (blue = visited):

(http://bighugelabs.com/map.php#top)

Obviously, my "To Go" list is much longer than I'd like it to be! I am trying to work on that, but then again, I am living on a teacher's salary. So it may take longer than other people. :-P

My upcoming trips I'm working on are to visit Iceland, hike the trail from Lukla to Everest's base camp in Nepal, and the explore the Patagonia either through Chile or Argentina. **I did update the map pictures in July, 2015.