Before We Go

Someday we will go -- until then, we have some figuring out to do.

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It’s a big world out there, so we’ve narrowed it down for you. From the temples of Malta to the crystalline waters of the Yucatán, explore our top destinations to visit this year.

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Inspirations

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Traveling Teaches Students in a Way Schools Can't

American education is largely limited to lessons about the West.

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Tibet’s Plea: Fix The Roof Of The World Before It’s Too Late

My beautiful country is suffering the effects of climate change. To avoid catastrophe, leaders need to act urgently at the UN Paris conference

[nevver]

Bitter Harvest

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Dialectic or dialectics (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wish to establish the truth through reasoned arguments.

Wikipedia definition

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http://www.findingsalongtheway.com

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I don't agree with governmental ideologies and policies of many of the places I've visited. I don't even agree with many US policies, or even policies in my neighborhood. But I don't believe a travel boycott is ever the answer. In fact, I deeply believe travel contributes, often granularly, but ultimately measurably, to the solution, or at least the evolution of consciousness. It is the human correction, and the arming of the oppressed with a larger truth, that empowers people to act. Without travel and person-to-person encounters, mental walls are erected, and it becomes easier and easier to demonize the other side. They're evil, monsters, not like us, ready to destroy us at first opportunity. But it is more often than not governments — and their ideologies, policies, and leaders — that paint us as different and worthy of ruin. It is the corrupt regimes — not the commuters or mothers and their children — which violate human rights with alacrity and little consequence.

Richard Bangs, http://www.fathomaway.com/postcards/good/reasons-for-forbidden-travel-north-korea-burma/

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The 25 Best Sites For Finding Remote Work

The ultimate list of resources to land a remote job and create the flexible life you've been dreaming of.

[wetheurban]

CASA BRUTALE, OPA

Designed by Holland- and Rhodes-based architects OPA (Open Platform for Architecture), this one-of-a-kind holiday villa has been proposed for construction in a cliff face in Greece and would offer spectacular views of the Aegean Sea.

Keep reading

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Words that are fun potential names for our projects

Maitri

Tacit

Understood

Relative

Fernweh

Aware

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Notes For Sarah’s Project

I think I want to somehow allow this travel to be research for my future tarot card project (Infinity Divided) --- I am interested in the idea of a traveler’s tarot and a storytelling tarot. Using the deck as a creative screenwriting and storytelling tool.  The current deck is entirely western -- the symbols, the characters (all white), the color palette but must importantly the storytelling structure.  I am interested in discovering non-western storytelling structures and incorporating them into the tarot to use as a tool for writers.  Tools like tarot, rune stones, i ching, are one of the only ways to create a self-dialogue that is tangible, or depending on your spiritual leanings, a dialogue with the universe. Most communicating I do with the world, the energy of the world, is monologue, the cards (and other forms), allow for a sort of response.  But those conversations are not entirely western conversations. Those modes of communication and symbols for communication should not be solely structured from a white perspective.  So I would like to begin to plan ways to talk to people, to read stories, to encounter non-three act narratives. And to understand the flora and fauna of other spaces and what those flora and fauna mean to the locals. 

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Notes for Greg’s Project

Visually beautiful - capturing the landscapes, the people, the spaces, the smells and tastes and sounds in photo and video. 

Short videos exploring the question "What does it mean to be a white male traveler from the US in ____?"

Short videos exploring alternative histories: what’s distinct about where we are, how does a local understand their home, and how is it different than I’ve been taught?

Visuals capture what we see; but also maybe a sense of how we're treated. Having the camera rolling while getting a rickshaw or taxi ride or being at a restaurant, how I'm treated, what that experience is like; trying to also capture the looks of passersby or something, this sense of how I'm seen. Through interview and maybe voiceover of my own that explores history and current events to understand why the world is shaped this way. 

Educational experiential documentary. 

I should also read some of the books I looked at a year ago, critical perspectives on travel and tourism and western-influenced globalization. How tourism impacts host communities.  

Juxtaposing the beautiful and the poetic with the momentary, transient, blink and you'll miss it experiences of just being in a new place. 

Use the camera as an instrument to challenge my experience. Don't let the camera be passive, make it an active part of interrogating the experience of traveling. Let its presence ask questions, of myself, of the circumstances we're in, of the people we meet. 

There are blogs about responsible travel - eco-friendly, sustainable, volunteer-based - but not necessarily critically-minded educational travel. I haven’t seen them, anyway. Be a voice for challenging the assumptions of readers in the US, and looking into the “why” and “how” of a situation, not just the “where” and “when.”

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There is no singular self to Africa. It does not conform to any one expectation, any one particular stereotype. It is all of those at once and defies it at the

Insightful blog post about traveling through Africa - the new colonialism of NGOs, and glimpses of daily life. 

“European language did not develop vocabularies adequate to describe non-Europeans worlds. Entire areas of African life remain unfathomed, untouched even, because of a certain European linguistic poverty.” -Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun

[gregorygrano]

Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity - Ark of Taste - Google Cultural Institute

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The Ark of Taste is a catalogue of foods at risk of disappearing that are a part of the cultures and traditions of the entire world. www.slowfoodfoundation.org/ark The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity coordinates Slow Food projects that preserve food and agricultural biodiversity: the gardens in Africa, the Ark of Taste (a catalogue of endangered traditional foods), the Presidia (projects sustaining small scale producers to save traditional products), the Earth Markets (farmers’ markets) and the Slow Food Chefs’ Alliance (a network of chefs using and promoting local products).

[gregorygrano]

Duoz, Tunisia. Seen in the Google Art Project’s Street Art Collection, https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/project/street-art.