Month: October 2020

“What do you want to get for dinner? There’s a McDonald’s somewhere in Nové Město…”

Everybody has a different reason behind their travel, be it a  business trip, a culture/language immersion, or a simple vacation. Wherever your intentions lie, everyone has one simple task in common: eating.

One of the many benefits of traveling outside of the United States is to try the many other dishes foreign countries have to offer. Going abroad expands your perception of flavor profiles; raw, authentic flavors that you could have never even imagined can become one of your new favorite meals. Limiting yourself to your own country’s food while you’re somewhere new restricts you from enlightening yourself on the culture around you and tasting something possibly delicious. 

A country’s food tells you a lot about their culture; for example, you might ask yourself why a cultural group only eats a certain food during a certain season. While I was in Iceland, I had the most delicious fresh Atlantic salmon salad. In Iceland, the salmon runs upriver from May to October, most frequently during the middle of this period; furthermore, since the country is entirely surrounded by water, fish is an integral part of an Icelander’s diet. The food within a culture also cues you into their history- going back to Iceland, Icelanders maintain a basic diet that reflects the bitter natural conditions in which they historically struggled to survive in. 

Most importantly, though, the local dishes wherever you are will never be better anywhere else. Why would ovocne knedliky made with locally grown Czech plums be as good in the United States? The fruit is sourced in their own country! Sure, you can Google a recipe and make it for yourself… I think we can agree that, however, it cannot get any better than chefs in restaurants who have been preparing the same dishes for years from the same recipes that have been used for centuries. All you have to do is enjoy it- eating local dishes is really the easiest way to connect with the culture you’re around.

Discovering new foods while you’re already at your destination can be exciting, but I’d also recommend finding a few cultural dishes you definitely want to try and explore the area trying to locate a place you can try it! It can lead you down unknown corners of a city or help you practice your language skills when asking for directions. Just have fun with it :).

 

We think a lot about money and how to save up, but why don’t we ever really think about the earth and how to save it? 

I’ve discussed travelling affordably a lot in this blog, but now I’d like to address a different aspect of going abroad: travelling sustainably.

Sustainable travel means finding forms of tourism without harming natural and cultural environments. Ideally, tourism should be beneficial to the area in which it takes place. This, unfortunately, is often not the case; have you ever heard of elephant rides in Thailand? Most people have, and put it on their bucket list because it seems beautiful or simply fun. However, their illegal capture for use in the industry of tourism is a huge problem- researchers estimate that there are only about 2,000 Asian elephants left in Thailand. Also, taming these elephants is no walk in the park… it’s much more brutal. These elephants need to be “tamed” (tortured) when very young to break their spirit so that they allow humans to ride on them. Riding these elephants and contributing money to this terrible practice is a more unconventional example of unsustainable travel, but unsustainable nevertheless.

Besides needing to be aware of how tourism affects the environment and local wildlife, it is also essential to be more aware of pollution levels caused by travel. As sustainable travelers, we can look for hotels and restaurants which recycle and are built from sustainable materials. It’s not even that hard- if you Google “Paris sustainable restaurants“, you’ll receive plenty of results. The same goes for hotels- Hotel de la Porte Doree in Paris uses water preservation techniques and ecological television sets that turn off when you walk out of the room. At about 80 dollars per night, it’s more expensive than the choices we discussed in the last blog post, but definitely cheaper than your conventional hotel.

Sustainable travel extends beyond these two options, though- think about the way you travel, too. 72% of CO2 emissions from tourism stem from transportation. On SkyScanner, if a flight will save CO2 emissions, a notification will come up explaining that the flight is a “greener choice”. Taking a two-way flight between New York and California generates around 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that a car emits in just one year. So, if you’re going to fly abroad, picking these “greener choice” flights are a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. Looking at flights from New York to Paris, a “greener choice” flight costs the same amount as a flight with similar layover times.

A part of sustainable travel that many don’t think about is its social aspect. We, as tourists, have a large impact on local people and communities. To ensure this impact is positive rather than negative, we can support businesses that are run by locals as well as community tourism projects rather than big-named companies. Looking into if the employees are fairly paid and if their work environment is safe before you contribute any money would also be a great way to be a sustainable traveler. Feeding into the local economy ensures that tourism doesn’t strike down the local culture.

As tourists, we need to be conscious of the way we travel and the impact we have on the area we travel to. We must take responsibility, and then take action, to help reduce the damage humanity has inflicted upon this Earth. Advocate for sustainable travel and put some of these practices into reality- fixing global warming won’t happen overnight, but everyone can contribute in one way or another!

 

“Oh, I’d love to go there, but I just can’t afford it!”

Plenty of people complain about expenses of travel without thoroughly researching alternatives. Of course, if you want to spend 7 nights in an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean, it’s going to be expensive. However, there are so many other housing options for going abroad that won’t cost you more than staying at a hotel somewhere in the USA.

According to Workaway.info, a Workawayer is “a traveler willing to help out for a few hours a day in return for a place to stay and food to eat”. Essentially, someone who exchanges labor for a homestay. Jobs range from working in hostels, training horses, working on farms, babysitting, teaching languages, cooking, for about 20-25 hours a week. Some hosts of these homestays even offer a wage for their guests; besides living like the locals & having a ‘free’ place to stay, you can even make some cash to spend on your meals! The best part, arguably, is that even though Workaway is very safe, you are not obligated to stay for the whole time if your host is rude!

Similar to Workaway, Couchsurfing is another way to live with a local (except this time it’s free!) Hospitality on Couchsurfing is totally costless. A host should never ask you to pay for their lodging, and Couchsurfing recommends that you don’t offer to pay either. However, since these people are letting you into their houses solely due to the kindness within their hearts, good Couchsurfers will repay their hosts with fun activities together and a possible friendship. Going out to a dinner or completing a free walking tour of the city together shows another side of Couchsurfing that many don’t consider; besides the free lodging, you can make a lifetime friend!

Hostels are also a very cheap alternative to hotels- they can easily save you 100 dollars a night (although you’ll have to source your own meals if you’re usually used to breakfast at a hotel). For anyone who may not know, a hostel is a shared lodging where you can rent a bed, kind of supplemental dorm style, typically with a shared lounge and sometimes a kitchen. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Skyscanner has a section on their website to search for hostels! A hotel in the center of Paris could cost upwards of 130 dollars, but if you stay in a hostel, you could be paying as little as 20 dollars per night.

These cheaper forms of housing will help you meet new people to connect with for a fraction of the cost of a hotel!

 

 

 

 

Life-changing experiences sometimes hide themselves in things you take for granted; you may not always have access to those things that you assume you can just make time for later. Studying abroad can be one of those life-changing experiences for students like us, but many claim they “can’t make the time” or that they will just “do it later”. From immersing yourself in a new culture to expanding your global outreach, the benefits of studying abroad has for your educational experience and overall lifestyle far outweigh the annoyance of rearranging your suggested academic path.

So many students are set in the more test-oriented educational system of the USA. Studying abroad can help you learn to adapt to new educational settings and styles of teaching; for example, there are no rankings or competition between students in Finland, which is basically unheard of to high school seniors who are asked to list their class ranking on their applications. Class sizes, even for underclassmen, abroad are infinitely smaller than what you may be used to in a public school in the USA; professors abroad typically promote self-learning through group work and student interactions. In Spain, a “jigsaw” method of learning is used, where every student in the class presents part of a lesson to their group; this prepares students for future collaborative work in their professional field. 

Besides expanding your educational horizons, you also enhance your network, which not only creates better opportunities in the work field, but can also improve your lifestyle overall. You can make friends from all over the world; not only will you become close with locals your age in the country you study in, but also with kids from around the globe who came to the country you did. The wider your social circle is, the more likely you are to develop more enriching career and social opportunities. Maybe one of your Italian friends will invite you to an interesting career seminar, but perhaps you will also visit your Australian friend every summer. Your windows of opportunity will expand beyond the borders of the USA.

Maybe most importantly, you’ll learn more about a new culture. You will expand your worldview and learn more about globalization; through studying abroad, you’ll have a better cross-cultural awareness. Culture has a big impact on how people react to situations, respect others, or even just cook meals. Studying abroad will help you see all these mundane aspects of life in a new light. 

When you experience a new culture for months on end, you will grow in confidence; spending time with brand new people while learning a brand new culture will cultivate your soul and pride into something of independence and resilience. It’s truly an essential experience!

“Ciaoooo… uhhh… dov’è il bag-no?”

Going to a country for the first time knowing at least a little bit of the language is enough to make locals open up to you infinitely more. Knowing even a few verbs and adjectives can help you in a tremendous way- reading signs or asking directions can save you from getting lost or wasting your time. 

But getting lost isn’t the most important reason to enrich your travel experience by learning the native tongue- the citizens of the country will be so much kinder to you. Trying to order food in France if you’re speaking French can make the waiters be much more patient with you and your food- everyone likes to see a foreigner at least make the effort to learn the language that they grew up with. John Yamamoto-Wilson recounts his time in New Caledonia, where he simply learned the local word for “hello.” Soon enough, he was making friends left and right with the inhabitants of NC because he was the foreigner who spoke the native language.

You can also get a lot of insight towards the culture of the area you’re visiting. By learning that native language, you’ll probably understand the country’s inhabitants better. You can learn more about their cultural dishes or how respect is expressed. For example, a lot of languages have a specific set of rules for conjugation when addressing an elderly person or someone of a higher power position. 

My personal favorite about knowing the language of the country you’re travelling to is bartering at the markets. I went to Italy with my AP teacher in junior year and I absolutely loved going to the farmer’s market and debating prices of little trinkets. The sweet, old Italian villagers seemed to be extremely happy to hear someone learning their language and were happy to give me the prices I asked for. 

I recommend taking a notebook and starting to practice as soon as you know you’re definitely going on the trip. Write down the basic verbs- to want, to be, to have, to need, to go, etc. Follow that up with the essential travel words, like hotel, restaurant, left/right, bathroom, train station, and anything else you can think of. It’s also convenient to have some questioning phrase in your vocabulary, like “where is” or “how do I”. If you have time after feeling confident in your conjugating abilities, try embellishing your lexicon with food descriptors or things about yourself, like “my name is” or “I am from”. 

Not only will learning some words in a new language be a fun learning experience, but it will also enrich your travelling experience in a way you can’t even comprehend until you do it. I couldn’t recommend it enough!