Travel Debate

Katie D.

September 2, 2009 - 8:00 PM

I recently participated in a heated debate with some friends. There were two camps: those of us who had studied or traveled extensively abroad and those who had not. The topic was the importance of going abroad while we're young. The friends who hadn't been abroad argued that they could have the same life-changing kind of experience most study abroaders report once they were established enough to travel comfortably. That they could wait a while and have an experience that was just as meaningful as study abroad.

I have had the incredible good fortune to travel and study in seven Latin American countries in the last three years. My official study abroad experience was in Chile, which I have blogged about before and which absolutely changed my life, generating most of the best stories I've lived. But I studied in Guatemala independently for three weeks after my freshman year. I have done service projects in Belize and Mexico. And I've traveled in Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay.

I love traveling so much. It fulfills a deep need for adventure and excitement. It also reminds me again and again about the beauty of humanity and our shared environment. I love basically every facet of travel: the discomfort of the buses or airplanes, the new natural vistas, the ugliness often manifest in cities, the new wildlife and cultures and foods of each place. I felt this almost as strongly during my first trip to Seattle and Philadelphia as I did when I arrived in Santiago, Chile. I love talking with strangers and I absolutely love the feeling of being lost in a new place, with the infinite possibility of a brand new experience.

Travel is uncomfortable. It means hours in public vehicles, dirty bathrooms, and bad road food. It means leaving your friends and family. It means being vulnerable - being foreign, not speaking a language perfectly, and making cultural blunders. It means taking yourself out of the pattern in which you usually live: the city, friends, university, job, and landscapes that you've spent years learning. We are so careful to create safe spaces around us in life. And travel challenges this. At its best, travel blows these comfortable ideas wide open and leaves you profoundly changed.

The conversation I had with my friends was based on an idea of what makes travel worthwhile. They argued that someday they would be able to travel in comfort and financial security, that they could see the same things and have similar experiences while sleeping in nice beds with room service rather than trying to get by on the bare minimum.

We are young. At twenty-one years old I can sleep anywhere, make friends easily, not fear mistakes, be forgiven my cultural blunders, and be willing to immerse myself in a way that I hope is indicative of my essential spirit and not just of my youth. But again and again I have seen older travelers miss a piece of the truth of a place because they are hidden behind the protection that comfort brings. Culture shock isn't comfortable. Witnessing isn't comfortable. That's what an increased budget can give you - protection from discomfort - another barrier between you and the truth of the place you're in.

I think I'm being a little too strong here. So I'll back off the debate with my friends and let the richer travelers alone. Maybe I'll talk a bit about what is good about student travel instead.

Most university students don't really have any idea where they'll be in five years. We're searching. Searching for options, searching for what will make us the happiest. Taking yourself out of the patterns and comforts of life in a hometown or university setting is a great way to find new passions or refine plans. At least, I felt like I discovered all kinds of essential truths of what I'll do in life while abroad. I want to work in service to others. I do not want to be in an office every day. I want to travel if I can. I would love to have a bilingual position. Also, I know that writing will always be a part of what I do and that reading and writing in a second language is something of which that I am extremely proud.

There is a time-tested and often true idea that study abroad makes people understand their own culture better. You see how others live and you realize what it is about your home that you love, and what there is that needs to change. You realize that not everyone is from the suburbs, or that not everyone had the opportunity of attending free public education. In Chile I met a woman who was completely illiterate. It shocked this reader-writer to her roots. The woman was kind and articulate, but had had to work as a young child and hadn't attended school. What a radical thing to learn while attending a university in another country. After that, my education was never more important to me.

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As I'm trying to write this explanation of my time abroad, I am assailed by so many images. How can I possibly explain how important study abroad is? As I'm writing, I remember when I turned in my first three-page paper written in Spanish for a Chilean professor. I remember the terror I felt when I stepped out of the plane in Guatemala and realized I was seriously alone. I remember how joyous it was when I realized I had good friends in Chile and that I could actually have stayed there and been happy. I remember what it was like standing in Machu Picchu at dawn and the winding paths through ruins in the Sacred Valley near that famous monument. I remember the small portions of rice, beans, and tortillas I ate with my host family in Guatemala and how I witnessed and experienced lack for the first time in my life. How we ate with the family we were building a house for in the student organization Un Techo Para Chile (A Roof for Chile). How a peanut vendor in Valdivia gave me free peanuts. How people would honk and whistle in Guatemala and how isolated and scared I felt the first time that happened. I remember the contrasts of Guatemala: the unbelievable beauty contaminated by litter, the extreme lushness of the environment juxtaposed with hunger and poverty, the way I was treated with kindness against the history of US-backed violence. I'm thinking about the experience of speaking to Chileans about common experiences: traveling to new cities and telling them about studying at one of their universities, in one of their cities, recommending restaurants and favorite places to study.

I see snapshot images of cities I visited, of my favorite cafes, of faces of my friends or people I asked for directions in the street. I remember the taste of the hot chocolate in Cafe Luna in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, which was the best I have ever experienced.

Explaining study abroad is like explaining a life story. The three weeks I spent in Guatemala changed me in a way I cannot understand for myself, much less explain to someone else. The four months in Chile generated more self-understanding and growth than any other time I can remember. The time abroad was both deeply personal and essentially collective: I saw myself in a global context, in a wider setting. Everyone who goes abroad experiences it differently. We go to different countries and we bring to them different life histories, different starting places. But there is something to living and studying in a foreign place that shakes us to our cores, that forces us to confront those things we don't usually want to face.

And we do it uncomfortably, joyfully, inadequately. We do it with blunders and excitement and fear. At least, that's how it was for me.

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A final thought.

I have a group of eight best friends. Seven of us went abroad. And as I see these amazing people returning from Jordan, Japan, Singapore/Malaysia, Argentina, Spain, and India, I see different people. They have come back profoundly changed. They are more willing to try new things, more willing to dance like fools, more willing to seek out adventures instead of staying in their living rooms. We have become an even more active, exciting, and tight-knit group than we were before we all parted ways.

If that isn't proof of the importance of study abroad, there isn't any way to get there.