I just read a great article that I want to share with fellow travelers and want-to-be travelers called 18 Life Lessons Learned from Traveling the World. It is well written, easy to understand, and reflects the lessons we have learned from our nomadic lives. As you read through this blog with photos, click on any of the captions and you will be taken back in time to the detailed blog or photo album of the experience.
As Americans, we like to think of ourselves as world savvy, but in fact we are insulated from the rest of the world. Only
39 percent of us have passports and the majority of Americans have never ventured outside the boarders of the USA. Many would have a hard time finding Alaska on a map, little less Vanuatu or Fiji.
Our access to world news, geography, and events is paltry, overshadowed by local stories, celebrity gossip, polarized political snarkiness, and narrowed curriculum taught in our schools, all of which minimizes and trivializes our viewpoint regarding the rest of the world and limits our understanding, compassion, and acceptance of other cultures, people, and languages different from our own.
It is really an imperative that young Americans travel more and experience the rest of the world so that when our opinons are formulated, they are derived from first hand knowledge and experience, not from media or the majority of Americans who have never ventured out of their country and perhaps not even out of their state or city.
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| Assisting Cook Island Rangers in Suwarrow jetty repair |
We would become a stronger nation by being more knowledgeable and less opinionated about which we know nothing. The term "ugly American" is derived from opinionated American travelers with a superiority based in ignorance, fear, and misinformation.
Russ and I have joined a couple of travel/service organizations recently to promote friendship and be goodwill ambassadors. Several years ago when we started our sailing voyage, we became Commodores of the
Seven Seas Cruising Association where the symbolic motto is to "leave a clean wake".
We are now members of
US SERVAS of
SERVAS International and
Friendship Force International,
Sacramento Chapter. Both of these organizations promote friendship, peace, and cultural understanding domestically and around the world. We visit their homes and invite them to visit ours. We have found that it is the people not the places that have enriched our lives.
If you have not yet read the article about
18 Life lessons from Traveling the World, please do so. Hope you will join us as fellow adventurers, travelers, and good will ambassadors. Our whole world is a a magnificent place, not only for the natural beauty, but for the rich diveristy of animals, culture, and wonderful human beings.
Cheers from the Worrall Travel R's
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