How do you define the value of travel?

A friend of mine told me the other day that she is going to take a trip next spring to Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and a few other countries in the region. She refered to her trip as "adventure travel", to which I responded that all travel is adventure travel. I don't think she entirely agreed with me. Her disagreement led me to wonder what travel really is and how do we place different value on the travel that people do.

I hate to use the word 'quality' but in this case I will since there seems to be the idea that some travel is better than others. But what defines travel as being of a better quality than other travel? Is it the destination? True there are some locations in the planet that are more difficult to get to, are more dangerous to travelers, as well as how many comfort amenities there are. Does a more remote and rustic location in a developing country make for more worthy, life enriching travel? I really don't think so.

In 2001 I went to Malaysia and have to admit that while what I saw and experienced there was life changing, it sure wasn't the only time that travel expanded my view of life and changed the way I thought of my home. While in Malaysia I did gain an appreciation of how fortunate we are in America, even our poorest don't have to endure the conditions that the poor in Malaysia do, and it helped me appreciate being a minority by being the only white girl for miles around.

However, I cannot discount my experiences in other countries as being life changing or adventurous. Such as when I encountered live snails at a market in Spain. Or conronting the expansive silence and extreme sadness of the concentration camp Dachau in Germany. Nor can I forget the feeling of standing beneath the Eiffel Tower and wondering at the dreams and hard work that had built an icon. Or finally running down the Naito Parkway in Portland towards the finish line of my first 5k, only 45 miles from home but still teaching the value of perserverance and confidence. While all those places aren't always considered to be "adventure travel" such as my friend is looking for, I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had in all my travel for anything.

Every trip is an adventure. It's just all in how you open your heart to the experience.

Big Baby News!

No, I'm not going to have a baby. Just getting that out of the way. But my boss from camp is going to have a baby! I'm going to be an Auntie Minke! Yay! To celebrate the occasion I followed the order to "start knitting" and went out to buy some yarn. As it turns out, they only sell baby yarn (which is either yarn for babies, or yarn made from babies) in these tiny little skeins. Except for one skein. A GIANT ball of yarn called The Pound of Love. This skein is literally bigger than my head. No joke. Since we don't know the sex of the little tyke yet I figured that I would get a nice gender neutral color. Because the last thing you want to do is impose gender boundaries on the child of YWCA employee. Bad idea. The green they had was really wussy so I went with yellow. Yellow is a happy color. And babies are generally happy. So, yellow=babies. There you go.

School is coming to an end for the term and I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm heading to the coast for the next term and will be out there doing a field course. Which means massive good times will be had and then I graduate. Scary. Life is moving so fast these days. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gents it's going to be a bumpy ride....or so they say. I guess.