Travel

Everyone wants to travel. The appeal is obvious; there are intriguing places scattered throughout the world, as far away as Milan, Italy or as close as Nashville, Tennessee.

Travel is an escape. It's a vacation from mundane routines, obligations, old faces, and suffocating surroundings. It's a chance to experience new things and to develop new perspectives. Ironically, it can be a relief to be thrown into a country where the words and signs are undecipherable. The novelty and confusion of ordinary tasks in a new environment can be an escape. The most rewarding part of traveling, though, is the rekindled appreciation for home. After a week of hotel beds, nothing is more comforting than slipping into familiar sheets. For the first time, you realize that your house has its own unique scent, a scent that can only be described as "home". Travel is an escape that washes away resentment for daily life and replenishes your appreciation for the ordinary.

Travel is education. Culture is not something that can be obtained in a classroom; only experience can broaden your mind to the fascinating and diverse ways of life around the world. By traveling to unfamiliar places, you expand your capacity to understand and appreciate diversity. You learn more than you can possibly fathom during a few days in a new environment than you can with years of conventional education.

Travel is adventure. Being in a new place is an opportunity to experience something new, whether it is a new food, a new activity, or a new view of the world. You can be an entirely new person and none of the unfamiliar people around you have to know your true identity. You can hang glide or parasail, or explore mountain peaks. The novelty of your location is adventure in itself.