Learning While Traveling: Improve and Explore
Learning While Traveling
Everyone dedicated to their journey will experience learning while traveling. Traveling will teach a person more about life and themselves than any other activity on Earth. It lets us know ourselves fundamentally, while removed from our routine and expectations at home. It shows us our capabilities, responses to the unthinkable and impressions of new places.
When novices travel, they do so for tourism and mild entertainment. This is absolutely fine, as it enriches life and provides stories for those back home. Being able to reminisce about the Great Wall or the Eiffel Tower is a memory to be treasured.
However, idle tourism has its limits. People who travel or vagabond for a while tend to crave more value beyond seeing interesting places and munching on interesting foods.
People crave growth and progress. And there is no greater opportunity than during a journey. Active learning while traveling, or rather, traveling for the sake of improving, is a wonderful way to experience the world.
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Skill Acquisition Traveling
One of the best ways to see the world is through a singular passion or skill. Are you a martial artist? A dancer? An artist? A chef?
Traveling to foster a specific skill allows a person to stay interested and passionate during a journey while also ensuring they’re honing their craft. A chef who visits Japan, Italy, Thailand and Brazil for culinary classes and workshops will return home with a new skill and cultural appreciation. A martial artist who practices Muay Thai in Thailand, Kendo in Japan, Krav Maga in Israel and Jiu Jitsu in Brazil might gain enough expertise to develop their own style. Yoga enthusiasts are often drawn to tropical retreats to fully focus on their health, skills and betterment.
Traveling to find experts or unique culture examples of a skill is useful, since it teaches nuances impossible to find in another location. Expert potters, craftsmen and writers all draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources, eventually birthing something new and unseen into the world.
Beginner Skills
Not all travel learning is rooted in an existing skill or experiences. It is also possible to explore an entirely new interest when learning while traveling.
For example, a person born in the mountains of Canada might be fascinated with the ocean. They want to learn how to dive, but in the most awesome way possible. So they travel to Belize and take the PADI certification courses along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.
Many travelers simply stumble across skills they had never even considered. People visiting Shaolin Temples to watch people perform Tai Chi stances have stayed for months, learning a new passion from scratch. A man wandering Central America might begin fostering desire to farm, after briefly working at an organic farm work-stay.
When looking at skills you are interested in, in tandem with travel, seek out the place with the highest expertise. Japan is undoubtedly the best place to learn how to make sake. Peru is difficult to beat when studying ancient Incan anti-earthquake construction methods. And there is no place on Earth better suited for teaching tap dancing than Ireland.
Language Learning While Traveling
One of the most common reasons to head to a foreign country is to take part in language immersion.
Learning French in France, Russian in Russia and Mandarin in China is an interesting experience. The nature of a country and its culture is gradually illuminated in more depths as fluency increases.
Remember, when learning a new language, production is vital. Speak often, frequently and consistently, even if your language isn’t perfect. Your brain will gradually create shortcuts to automatically use the most common words you need, building fluency rapidly.
This method can be done anywhere in the world with online learning materials or books, but living in a country while learning the language forces a much higher rate of improvement. If a person visiting Ecuador needs to say “leche” every time they want milk in their coffee, the word tends to become automatic quickly.
For people wanting to practice languages through apps, Duolingo is a solid option for beginner phrases. A stronger piece of Language Learning Software is Mango Languages. This app isn’t normally free, but it can be found through local library programs across the United States.
Self-Education Travel
Not all travel needs to be centered around a skill. Learning for its own sake, entertainment or for creative reasons is also a perfectly valid reason to explore. Rooting up fun facts in a region is compelling as well.
The primate’s called Bonobos gained their species name from a typo: they were discovered by the west in a town called Balobo and there was a typo on the shipping crate.
The monkeys at Mt. Popa in Myanmar are fed by tourists to the point of aggressively stealing purses and loose clothing. The monks that maintain the temple are well armed with handheld slingshots.
There are Amazonian tribes which are entirely oral cultures. These tribe sing their entire histories to their children in epic songs, also designed to provide instructions on how to survive in the jungle.
Traveling for learning’s own sake is a good way to interact with the world. A person can also travel to research their own interests. It’s hard to imagine an Ancient Civilization Professor passing up a trip to Rome, Tikal or Athens.
Setting a Purpose
Traveling for tourism is a perfectly valid way to see the world. Learning how to explore the world is a skill on its own which requires a bit of practice and patience to master. But once a person has the knack of traveling, picking something to learn abroad becomes a huge motivator and enhancement. Learning while traveling and picking a topic prior to planning a journey helps with this.
Discover your interests and combine them with the travel experience. Not only will you learn about the world, its cultures, yourself and your capabilities. You’ll also become skilled and enlightened in the process.