I could tell you more about the places we’ve been and show you more of the pictures wetook, but there’s really not a good way to convey the actual experience. Right now all I can really say is”Yeah. I did that. It was cool.”But that doesn’t really capture everything.
There’s no way to capture crossing the streets of Istanbul and gettingcaught in the echo of the call to prayer as they bellow from a mosque in the distance.
There’s no good way to tell you what it smells like to be caught in a coastal area of Barcelona,and the smell of the fish markets makes you either really anticipate or really opposed to the idea of a seafood dinner.
There’s no good way to tell you how it feels to be almost thrown offof a camel (but I’ll just say, whatever you’re thinking,it is probably much more frightening)or even what it’s like tofeel the crunch of broken pottery pieces in the gravel as you walk away from an excavation site.
There’s no good way to tell you about laughing with a local over the language barrier, or what it’s like to try to keep a straight face while attempting worship songs inGreek.
So since there’s no good way to really tell you these things,I’ll tell you this: Go. It doesn’tmatter where. Just go. You can scroll through Pinterest boards and look at your friends’pictures, but the world stays in 2D from the comfort of your dorm room. Traveling takes a lot of time and usually a lot of money, but it can become a priority to work for just like anything else.
It’s not somuch about traveling while you’re still at Harding or which program to go on if you do choose to travelwhile still at Harding.It’smore about choosing to make traveling something important in your life. There’s a quote by Augustine Hippo that I think about a lot these days and it goes like this,”The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
Now before you cross-stitch that and put it in a frame, I think it’s worth a moment to at least consider. People in our circles tend to advocate going to third world countriesorparts of the world that may be deemed”less fortunate.”Thatis obviously great, butas I said in my first blog post: Wherever you go that is away from home, there’s always going to be something extra and something missing. Anytime you visit a new place, let it teach you something. We have atendency to say”Ileft my heart here,”or”I left a piece of myself here,”but I’d encourage you to keep your whole heart withyou wherever you go. In fact, I’d recommend taking a piece of these places and keeping them in your heart instead.
Ithas reached that point in thesemester where everyone is trying to plan free travel and cram everything in that they still wanted to see and do here in Greece, and I think it would be pretty easy to do that with our whole lives. Take the opportunities you have nowso that one day youcan look back at this time and think,”Yeah. I did that. Cool.”
