Sue Pon

This wonderful writer wrote that “to travel is to live”.  When I stopped at his museum in Odense, Denmark all my friends and I got a magnet with that phrase.  That was over 10 years ago and the magnet is still on my refrigerator.  Oh yeah, the writer was Hans Christian Andersen, the writer of “The Little Mermaid”.

Why do I travel?  I love the idea of exploring new places, discovering my hidden gems and learning more about the world around me.  I must admit that a great many of the experiences that I remember about traveling are centered around food.  But there are also many experiences that are just being there in the moment. 

Ok, you need examples, I love gelato.  One can get excellent gelato just about anywhere in Italy.  But the place that rival Baskin-Robbins in variety is a little hole in the wall place called Fenniccho’s in Nice, I was in Nice 7 days and I went there 9 times for gelato.  I had black olive gelato, thyme, whiskey sour and avocado to name a couple of the more unusual ones. 

In the moment, where you are just there and in awe of nature and all the beauty it has made – Two national parks in Croatia, Plitvice and Krka National Parks, ever walk across a cascading waterfall?  I stopped to take a picture and then had a “please God don’t let me fall” moment.  It was stunning and I was stunned.

Getting to see a glacier calve is one of the rare beauties of nature, but pulling alongside that same glacier and see how insignificant you are leaves you speechless.

I want to inspire my students to love to travel as I love to travel, to discover their own hidden gems and learn more about the world around them, and leave the world a better place because of their being there.