Whenever I'm going to have an especially long absence from this site, I like to let you know about it. The warning might save you a few seconds of visiting a non-updated Tangent Space(s), and at any rate it makes me feel like you might miss my blogging, and that thusly this whole enterprise is a valuable use of my time.
My raging neediness aside, it's time for one of those warnings. I will not be updating this site until, say, mid-August. You're probably wondering what could possibly tear me away from my beloved blog for so long, and you're right to wonder that. It would take a lot.
Well, I will be spending the next 6 weeks in Melbourne, Australia!
I (and the team going with me) will be keeping a blog specifically to give updates about our mission trip-- stories, photos, prayer requests, etc. Feel free to check that regularly if you want to hear about my ministry experiences and lessons learned in the land down under.
I thought I would leave you with one final (mini-)tangent. And the tangent that's been on my mind lately, of course, is international travel.
The Best and Worst of Going Overseas
For general air travel woes, here's an old post on the subject
The Worst
1. Jet lag
I'm not necessarily a seasoned world traveler, but this ain't my first rodeo (somehow I need you to puzzle out that rodeo = flight across the Pacific). If you've never been jet lagged, basically it's as terrifying as you'd expect-- your internal clock just being totally wrong. Like, 12 hours wrong. There's nothing fun about that.
2. Missing your checked bags
Flying domestically with one or more layovers, your checked bags have an okay chance of arriving when you do at your final destination (by no means 100%, but okay). Going international, well... you're not getting that luggage when you get there. Just accept it. I hope you can fit 2-3 days of survival items in your carry-on. You're going to need it.
The Best
1. The beauty of other cultures
It's so easy to think of America as the world. I mean, I know there are other countries out there, but in the back of my mind, they function like Alaska or Hawaii. Just more distant extensions of what I know. Going to those countries helps to shatter this false picture of our world. The mystery, unfamiliarity, strangeness (and yet relatability) of other cultures are fascinating.
2. A better understanding of humankind
Once you're in another place, meeting people and learning about their lives, it's so much easier to understand what things are universal to people everywhere and what things are specific to specific cultures. Sure, we might learn in a classroom that America is "individualistic" while Mexico is "collectivistic", but what does that look like? In what ways does a Mexican family function differently from an American one? What would still look the same?
This isn't goodbye, it's... yeah, it's goodbye
But just for a month or two
Have you traveled overseas? What was your favorite thing about it?
Jon
like you said, the universality of humankind. it's so easy to be ethnocentric sometimes and think that the things we derive happiness from are our own as americans and people of other nationalities wouldn't understand them, but to have that idea proven wrong makes the world seem much smaller to me
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