by
KAK
I had the spectacular luxury of seeing a lot of the world when I was kid...as long as it wasn't behind a wall or a curtain. As an adult, not so much. It's not that I don't want to float between Buda and Pest, trudge across Moscow, or do the Istanbul-Was-Constantinople dance. I do, really do.
However I don't want to visit. I want to experience.
That requires more than a few days in-country. Don't get me started on spending more time in transit than you do on the actual holiday.
Planes. Ew.
I want to do a "learning" trip. Think "semester abroad" style minus the hostels and oral exams. I'd be a professional student if there wasn't that pesty thing called tuition.
Yeah, yeah. I'm a little nutters. We've established that. But here's what sold me on the notion of why studying abroad is better than bouncing around the world spending two days in tourist districts.
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| St. Peter's College Dining Hall |
Once upon a grad-school program, I lucked out. I took sabbatical from the day job and spent a summer study at St. Peters College, Oxford. Our challenge was to develop business plans around new intellectual property owned by the college. Mind-boggling IP aside, I had my first true pub-crawl there, learned the rules of cricket, spent many a night at theaters-in-the-park, and got trapped in Manchester. I also had the misfortune of my first taste of haggis in this dining hall (imagine my surprise when I saw Harry Potter having the same meal in the same place a few years later.)
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| Jet d'Eau on Lake Geneva |
We then headed to Geneva to study with the assorted alphabet soup of international trade organizations. My best "stupid American" moment came when I asked our host to see the Jet d'Eau...as I was standing under said big-ass fountain. Okay, okay, maybe I should have read the tour book first, but hey, I'm all about learning from the locals...and I'm okay with being the butt-end of jokes for a while too. ~doh!~
With experiences like that you come away with more than a hole in your pocketbook. You're enlighted about more than the best tourist traps. You experience the culture and the country. You get a chance to see through the eyes of the residents and try your hand at being one.
Best? You gets to learnt you sumfin nude.
If you could take a sabbatical anywhere and study anything, where would go and what would you study?
