Oh, and when you do go out skipping the globe please stay in contact and let me hear from you. At least every once in a while, because I am going to miss you.
And now some links for our intrepid travelers.
First, how do you get out there and get going? And once how there, how do you keep yourself going mentally, spiritually and financially? An excellent book that will answer some of those questions is “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel” (Rolf Potts). Well written in a conversational style, Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life—from six weeks to four months to two years—to discover and experience the world on your own terms. Veteran shoestring traveler Rolf Potts shows how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel.
There is an accompanying website to the book here, but more interesting than that is the blog site that can be found at vagablogging. This has entries from Rolf Potts as well as others about travel, touring, exploring, and almost anything even slightly related. From books and movies to food and relationships, it will all get hit upon at vagablogging.
Next there is the site Glimpse Abroad. This is not one of those where to go, what to see travel sites. This is mainly a site of personal stories of the experiences you have when you travel and get yourself out of you safe little comfort zone. The glimpses into what happens abroad that you will read at Glimpse Abroad are often personal, sometimes funny, but always thought provoking. This is what happens when you stop looking at a place on your trip and start to experience your travels.
And finally a language site. Unlike a lot of the world, Americans aren’t normally brought up to be bilingual or multi-lingual. Learning another language can be hard for us, not to mention frustrating. LiveMocha attempts to change some of that by making the process interactive. While breaking the process down into lessons, LiveMocha also involves you with a community of people doing the same things so that you have others to interact with and feed off of. Finally there is a motivational aspect where they track your process and actually measure how you are doing. Different approaches to learning work with varied results for different people, but this is one that certainly seems worth trying.
And again, please don’t forget to keep in touch.
