Let's Get Packing

          Ok, so here it is the last post of the semester. So, what is the theme of this post you ask? Packing! This whole semester has led up to this post, talking about where I want to travel, how I want to travel, and finally what I would take with me. The reading that I most identify with is In Xandu, I know, I know, I keep bringing this one up, but it really does give insight into the beginnings of travel; something that the other readings didn’t do. Dalrymple talked about planning his trip, what he was taking, and even who he was traveling with … a very good example for our travelogues (hint, hint).

So when thinking about my own travelogue and what I would take with me to Belize, the only thing I can think of is clothes and shoes. Yes, I am a typical girl. I pack, literally, almost every piece of clothing that I have because you never know what type of situation you will find yourself. It is not uncommon that I take 2 bags just to go Atlanta, GA for Thanksgiving.  With that being said, I will probably need to take a trip mall soon.

Well, what else do I need to take … aside from the essentials, which I feel I don’t need to explain. Hmm, I’d probably want to remember my passport and remind my parents about theirs, they can be forgetful. Also, I need to take sunscreen. For me and my mom SPF8, for my dad SPF50+ … he’s a pretty fair skinned guy. Keeping with the sun theme, I will need to take multiple pairs of sunglasses, to go with my multiple outfits.  I think that I will defiantly take my camera and since my camera sucks, my parents will bring their camera too. I’m not too big on taking pictures anyways but I love to have my picture taken, so it evens itself out.  

I am sure that I am missing a lot of things … I’m not a good packer. I am that annoying person who packs the night before and forgets their toothbrush.  But luckily for me, I will be on cruise boat and if I do forget something incidental, I’m sure I can get one, or buy one from the little market. Yes, cruise boats have markets on them. Wrapping things up, needless to say clothes are the most important thing to me when I go on a trip. I don’t know why, it just is.

Traveling: What's the Difference?

The idea of traveling makes me quiver with anticipation … mainly because I love traveling and there are so many things one can associate with it. Diving into the idea of travel in the literal sense can be a little boring, so this week Ron has us comparing and contrasting two types of travel. I have chosen to look at Roughing It by Mark Twain and In Xandu by William Dalrymple, one of my favorite readings of the semester.

The two readings in essence are easily contrastable in terms of travel since one was written in the late 1800s and the other in 1989. Hopefully we can all tell which piece was written when. Roughing It tells the story of Twain and his brother on their travels out west. Naturally during the late 1800s they were traveling by stage coach most of the way. He described the coach as “an imposing cradle on wheels” because of the way it bobbed and swayed along the road. He also talked of cramped space, first with three days’ delayed mail and then when a woman joined him and his brother for a very short portion of their journey. Twain’s journey also wasn’t the cleanest either, I think we can all recall the description of the comb … NASTY! Switching gears, In Xandu tells the story of a man’s rendition of Marco Polo’s journey to Asia. It is a more comfortable expedition; plane, tour bus, and a little hiking here and there. Dalrymple never complained much; at least it didn’t come off that way to me. There was a large portion of his writing that focused on a conversation that he had with a woman on a bus, but his encounter seemed more interesting if not pleasant compared to Twains.

After looking at how the two pieces are different, searching for similarities should be a little bit easier now. Although the mode of transportation was different, both Twain and Dalrymple were embarking on long journeys. Their travel allowed for them to also meet people along the way and ironically for both it was a woman.  Also, traveling in not-so-comfortable conditions seems to be a theme for these two pieces. Both Twain and Dalrymple experienced a situation that would make any germaphob cry for mercy.

When looking at the way that we travel, it really does make a potential experience different. At the end of Twains piece he followed up with a little excerpt on how it would have been to travel to the west by train. Everything that he had been through while traveling by stage coach would have been just a figment of imagination, something that he once heard from a passerby. I love all different types of transportation … and I cannot wait to be traveling in Belize by boat, jeep, and foot!

Food on my Journey

Food is more than just something that we consume to fill our hungry bellies. Food is as much part of culture as language, religion, or traditional customs … it sometimes is the edible expression of national pride. Both Dalrymple and O’Hanlon allowed food to play a part in their cultural experiences within their writing. I think one of the best ways to fully experience a culture is to eat its food.

Before I chose to go to a four-year liberal arts college, I actually wanted to attend the CIA; no, not the government CIA, but the Culinary Institute of America. I understand that passion and love can resonate through the food that I make and in turn, make others happy when they eat my food. Even though I didn’t go to the CIA I still cook for my family and friends on a regular basis. My understanding of what food can do has allowed me to see that the love one has for a culture can come through in their cooking.

When I travel to Belize I want to experience all the types of food that will be available to me. While doing research for my travelogue I wanted looking into the diet of Belizeans and find out what their national dish is, if they even had one. One thing I found was that rice forms an important part of the daily diet of the Belizeans. They love consuming rice and beans. In Belize, rice is cooked with red beans instead of black beans, which is used elsewhere in Latin America. Along with red beans, they sometimes add grated coconut and black pepper to flavor the rice. It can be eaten alone, but usually the dish is consumed paired with fish, chicken, pork, beef or vegetables. Then of course you have your typical, what I would call Hispanic, foods like Relleno, Tamales, Escabeche, Tacos, Chimole and Negro.

Naturally, with all this rice and beans in the Belizean diet the national dish too incorporates this. Often called 1, 2, 3, the national dish consist of rice and beans, stewed chicken, and potato salad. No, I didn’t make the potato salad part up, but I do admit that it’s weird seeing potato salad as part of the national dish; I associate it more with family picnics then with Belize.

Although all my researching made my mouth water I can’t say that I will actually eat any of it. Let’s be real, I’m going on a cruise ship and only spending one day in Belize. I really only have one opportunity to each this amazing food, lunch time. Then I have to bicker with my parents, who admittedly do not have as sophisticated of a pallet as mine, if they do decide to eat somewhere off the ship. But I take it as a challenge, to help my parents experience new things through food, rather, new cultures through food.

Different Writing Styles, Same Travel Writing Genre

In another English class that I am taking, we write blog responses to readings much like we do in this class. The very first response was about genres; looking at the creation of genres, what they are, and the significance of them in writing. The prompt for this week calls us to look at three readings, Metthiessen, Cahill, and Dalrymple and evaluate the difference styles that each have adopted, while staying within the boundaries of the travel writing genre.  

The Cloud Forest, written by Matthiessen, is done in the diary style. Each day is recorded and the ability to significantly analyze what he is going through it lost because of this. Although, he does have a keen ability to describe to the reader what he sees, hears, and experiences, so that they too can feel as if they are present with him. The quote we discussed in class is the perfect example of this. “There came a sudden avalanche of tropical rain, crashing to earth, and immediately, in a small stream, small fish like sun-fish leaped and whirled.” His imagery is what brings the reader along.

In Xandu, written by Dalrymple, is done by intertwining historical accounts with his own. I am not sure if this would count as a writing style, but for me it does. Dalrymple, who is following Marco Polo’s journey to Asia, compares Polo’s experiences to his own. At the beginning of the reading he talks about his experience at the Holy Sepluchre. He described the tension and awkwardness between the Greeks, Armenians, and other groups that worship there. He then goes on to explain how Marco Polo, who also visited the Holy Sepluchre in 1217, would have felt that same awkwardness since Jerusalem had been taken over by Islam just thirty years before. This mix of contemporary and historical writing helps to put both experiences into perspective.

Pecked to Death by Ducks, written by Cahill, I think, was the most interesting style out of these three. I would say that Cahill’s style seemed to be a serious-humor. He didn’t travel out of the country to a faraway place, he was within American borders experiencing and observing a barrio on the west coast. He was taking a serious issue, mainly drugs, and writing about the people that live their life under that influence. Although it is serious, like I said, he takes an almost humorous tone with his descriptions. “I saw it all in my mind's eye: thousands of chronic PCP users stumbling and lurching through the parking lot, all of them sweating and drooling, growling and barking, attacking anything that moved in their delirium, stumbling after their prey with glazed, marble eyes. And you couldn't hurt them, these zombie assassins. They'd just keep coming for you, like creatures out of the Night of the Living Dead.”

These three styles of writing are completely different and as we found out in class discussion, some people gravitate towards specific styles. This might have been predictable but I would say that I enjoyed Dalrymple’s In Xandu the most, both in writing style and in content. Matthiessen’s style, for me, is too much. It’s too descriptive and I think that takes away from the content. There has to be a balance. As for Cahill’s piece, I enjoy a good laugh and I would say it came in a close second for me, but there’s a time and a place for humor. Not everything can be funny. Even though I didn’t enjoy every piece we read, it is cool to think that such different styles fit into the same genre.

What Borders Will I Cross?

While I was thinking about the borders that I may encounter while on my trip to Belize, I couldn’t really pinpoint any that meant something to me. I know that sounds bad, so I decided to look deeper at some of the readings that really pushed the border issue to give myself a little push in the right direction. The three readings that I chose, Dalrymple, Matthiessen, and Kapuscinski, to me, show the most about crossing borders and how those borders can affect the people crossing them.

In Xandu, written by William Dalrymple, pushed two borders; ethnic and cultural. Dalrymple, who is from England, decides to follow the path of Marco Polo into Asia. During his journey he travels through culturally and ethnically diverse areas that are much different than his own. As he made his way from Israel to Asia, Dalrymple wrote of the different people that he came into contact with and the various ethnicities and cultures that he experienced. For him, as a person just passing through, these borders seemed more important to understand rather than to cross.

The Cloud Forest, written by Peter Matthiessen, pushed the environmental border that he crossed on his travels in South America. Begin from New York City; Matthiessen was way out of his element traveling to the jungles of South America. The Amazon rainforest is a very unique environment, different than any other place on earth. Matthiessen described it in this way; “[…] the forest is truly beautiful; it is difficult to conceive of a lovelier place in the world.”

In a previous post I talked about what I called the “foreigner border” in Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Travels With Herodotus.  Ron seemed interested yet disappointed that I didn’t take it further. So, I will take it further. To me, the foreigner border is the hardest and the easiest to cross. I said that this border was more of a personal problem, feeling like an outsider in an unfamiliar place. When you feel comfortable in a new environment and not like an outsider, you’ve crossed the border. That’s the easy part. The hard part comes with the native people actually accepting you, making you feel welcome, and treating you like one of them. That’s the hardest part, getting others to view you as their equal in their country, society, city, or town. Being a foreigner doesn’t mean you have to travel half way around the world, it means that you are in a place that you are unfamiliar; a place that people can spot someone different. The best example is a tourist from Akron going to New York City. They can tell you’re not from around there, so they might treat you differently. For the sake of my readers I won't take it too much further, but there is another element to this border; time. How long does it take for someone to consider themselves not to be a foriegner, or for natives to accept an outsider as one of thier own?

After taking some time to look at the borders that others have crossed I think that I will absorb them as one’s the I see myself crossing in my future travels. Going to Central America there will definitely be ethnic and cultural borders that I am eager to cross. Environmental borders can make people uneasy … not knowing what poisonous thing could bite you in the jungle, yet I am still excited to cross from the concrete jungle to an actual jungle. The last one, the foreigner border, I think holds the most weight for me. I throw myself into the places that I travel, immersing myself into every aspect of a culture. This is probably one reason why I don’t see myself as a foreigner when I travel, however I think this will be hardest for me because I won’t be accepted as an equal. I will be a tourist; someone to eat, drink, and buy products. It saddens me, but as I prepare for my travels it’s a reality that I have to face.

Russell and Kapuscinski --- Crossing Borders

The most prevalent theme that we discuss in Travel Writing is the crossing of borders; not only physical borders but also metaphorical ones as well. While learning about the different people that are considered travel writers, I have come to better understand the power of a diary, journal, or piece of writing that reflects the obstacles, or borders, that one might encounter while traveling. I have never kept a diary or journal, even while I travel. Even though I better understand the importance of it, it doesn’t mean that I believe keeping such keepsakes is important. I think that keeping a diary or journal, especially while traveling, means analyzing everything from my actions to my mood. I feel as though an experience is lost when I analyze, more so because I tend to over analyze. Yes, I am one of those people who constantly feel the need to read between the lines … even if there is nothing to be read.

Connecting my thoughts on diaries, journals, and travel writings to this week’s prompt, to me, is simple. In order to understand what type of metaphorical border one crosses requires analytical thought. With that being said, let’s look at two very different travel writers and travel experiences.  The travel writers Mary Russell and Ryszard Kapuscinski are great examples of travel writers who specifically travel for the purpose of crossing borders.

In the Amazonian packet, we read an excerpt from Mary Russell’s Mirror Images. Her writing is based in Bosnia, a much different place than her native Dublin. Thus, we can imagine the multitude of borders that she encountered. A specific example is crossing the gender border. I think that this is most important when talking about a female travel writer. Men and women take on different gender roles based on a specific culture and while reading Russell’s excerpt we can see the different expectations Bosnians place on women.

“But when Ahmed handed me his [gun] and they all looked with interest to how good a shot I might be, a wave of nausea overcame me and I couldn’t touch it. The soldiers laughed and returned to their game; it was as they expected.”  (Russell 127)

            In Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish native traveled outside of the Eastern Bloc nation to write about different places and cultures. Coming from a Communist controlled country, there were many metaphorical borders that Kapuscinski crossed. Like Russell, I will focus on one. The major border that I feel Kapuscinski crossed was that of foreigner.  He traveled to Italy, India, and Greece to name a few places, but he was never comfortable because he always felt like an outsider.

“I began to feel unpleasant and uncomfortable. I had changed my suit, but I apparently could not conceal whatever lay beneath it that shaped and marked me as a foreign particle.” (Kapuscinski 14)

            These two particular borders that Russell and Kapuscinski crossed I find somewhat important. For me, as a female, crossing gender borders can be hard and it makes understanding a culture even that more important when traveling. As for feeling like a “foreign particle,” I don’t think it’s too important of a border. Feeling out of place is a personal problem, again stemming from not understanding or knowing how a specific culture might work. In the end, I think crossing borders is easy when you have the knowledge to do so.

Great Explorers --> Lewis and Clark

Travel Research

In a previous post, I described my ideal trip … or rather, my lack of desire to go somewhere specific. To think of how I might prepare myself before the trip to God only knows where is hard for me. 1) Leaving on a whim doesn’t give me much preparation time and 2) I don’t think that I would want to know anything. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s because I find being unaware to be interesting. It leads to experiences that I wouldn’t have had if I had planned everything ahead of time. Now, in order to fulfill requirements for future assignments (travelogue) and this post I have to choose a specific place and talk about what kind of research I would do before I packed my bags. For these reasons alone, I have chosen to focus on my family’s vacation to Cozumel, Isla Rotan, Cayman Islands, and Belize.

            I find, like I said before, that I wouldn’t want to plan everything out. Thus, my researching wouldn’t not consist of traveling guides. I am going to focus only on Belize because that’s really the only place I’m super excited about visiting. Take a moment and think about Belize with me … what do we already know? It’s in Central America; it was once inhabited by the Mayan culture and has hundreds of Mayan ruins, and it has a rich history of pre-colonization, colonization, and independence. The researching can now start.

            I would first get a map of Belize and plot out the ruins that I want to see or find most fascinating. Yes, this is time consuming but as I plot I am reading information about the different sites and history behind them. I’m not a Central American historian and I don’t plan to be in the future, but my fantastic Walsh education has brought me up to speed with most general information about the area. I probably wouldn’t spend much time researching that. I would however, burry my head in a book on the Mayan Civilization. For me, one of the most interesting things is ancient civilizations and this would be the perfect opportunity to learn more about it. I might brush up on my Spanish skills a little, but Belize’s official language is English, so I should alright in that department.

            Most people, I feel, will choose to look through travel guides, maps, maybe even talk to people they know that have been there before. I understand why they do this, to prepare themselves and to gain a better understanding of where they are going. For me, it’s not like that. I feel like I just keep saying the same thing over and over, but it’s true; I don’t like planning! Planning makes for a boring and predictable trip. I myself am an unpredictable person, you never know what I’m going to say or do next … it only fits that I would want my travels to be just as spontaneous as my personality.

Would I travel with Mark Twain?

When I think about Mark Twain, I always think the same thing: was he a transcendentalist writer? For some reason I just cannot remember … then I Google it, and no, he was not. Well, now that I have gotten that burning question answered, I can focus on the blog at hand. Would I travel with Mark Twain? After careful deliberation this is what I came up with …

I think I might have to say no on this one. And no Ron Scott, it is not just because he offended a member high up on my family tree, Henry David Thoreau, it would be because I cannot travel with a complete stranger! Mark Twain dabbled in many things as we found out during our class discussion, but most famously he is an author. Not going to lie, I do not read. In fact I would go so far as to say I loathe it unless it has some historical significance. Thus, I have not read anything written by Twain, with the exception of the reading for homework, and I do not intend in the future. I have however, seen movies based off of Twain’s novels. But like most Hollywood exaggerations, I am sure the books are much better.

Now that my relationship, or lack thereof, with Twain has been established I can dive right into the reason why I would not want to travel with him. Like I said, for me Mark Twain is a complete stranger. He has a scary resemblance to Albert Einstein and I would want to travel with someone with similar “travel level” as me. I just got done googling Mark Twain, and learned that he had traveled extensively, not only in the United States but internationally too. He would be way above me on the travel scale. I want someone to experience things for the first time, not someone to guide me or tell me what I should do. For some reason I feel like Twain would do that. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

I am such an indecisive person; I cannot even come to a conclusion right now. I said that I might have to say no, but after getting my thoughts out I think that maybe it would not be so bad to travel with Mark Twain. Like I said, he is a stranger to me so I should take the time to get to know him before I judge. I think next time I travel I will take Twain with me, in book form that is. Then we will see … maybe my relationship with the “father of American literature” will blossom, or it will fizzle out and I will continue on with my Twainless life.

WOTD -- My ideal travel companion

My ideal travel companion would be my best friend Joe. I would choose him because he is my best friend and we always have too much fun together, but also because I know that he and I have to same idea of what traveling really is. He is into making traveling about fun but he understands that it’s also about learning/understanding different cultures and languages.

What's my Ideal Trip?

Most people think I am a little weird because I always want to go somewhere off the wall, or somewhere that I will most likely never go again. In a conversation with Maggie, we talked about this very idea; the idea of heading off to Thailand, the jungles of South America, or some other random place. Choosing a destination for me is as easy as throwing a dart at a world map, wherever the point sticks, I’ll go. Most people who know me would say that I have a certain knack for foreign languages and an extraordinary curiosity for culture. I have a certain way of melting into my surroundings, not just a mere a spectator but as a participant. I would say that my love of culture has even made me want to pursue my master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology … see I told you I was a weirdo.

So, now that we understand a little bit more about me, my answer as to what my ideal trip should be simpler to understand. I have no ideal trip. I have no one place in the world that I want to go to, or a certain statue or monument that I have to see before I die. I just simply want to travel. I have no expectation of anything when it comes to traveling, and that is just one of the many things that I love about myself. Some people might think it’s a cop out by saying that I do not have an ideal trip, but in reality, the nonexistence of my perfect vacation is in itself an ideal trip. Unless you have experienced going to every place in the world, you cannot really say that you choose one over the other … that’s my opinion.

Bringing it all together, and by that I mean using the Twain reading as an example, we can see the consequences of expectations. “By the door of the station-keeper’s den, outside, was a tin washbasin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and piece of yellow bar soap […] From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a string – but if I had to describe the patriarch or die, I believe I would order some sample coffins.” (Twain 21/22) This is just one of the many examples Twain uses to show us that his expectations of heading west with his brother were not what he thought. Unfortunately for him, the circumstances turned out worse instead of better.

This is why I do not have an ideal trip. Having an ideal trip means having expectations about what you might see, hear, smell, or even eat. I am not sure if it was the way my parents raised me, or some genetic malfunction, but I do not travel with these kinds of expectations. Let’s be real, I expect it to be hot and sunny when I go to Belize this summer, but I hope that you understand what I mean. I cannot have an ideal trip that happens by chance: meeting a local on the street, finding that fabulous hole-in-wall restaurant, or even just accidently finding a hidden waterfall… these things cannot be expected but are the most rewarding. So, what is my ideal trip? Your guess is as good as mine, as long as we get there by plane.

Herodotus

            While reading Herodotus’s history of Egypt, I found myself very interested in what he had to say; although most of that probably had to do with me being a history major. Known as the father of history, Herodotus had taken the time to learn the different aspects of the culture that he wanted to write the history of. Throughout our reading, he chose to look deeper at what it meant to be Egyptian not only in custom and culture, but also in geography and religion. It might have seemed for many like a jumbled description, just listing everything he knew about Egypt. However, looking at Herodotus’s writings from a travel writing stand point, it is the perfect example of what people should read for travel preparation.

            Although he might not have intended to, Herodotus had created a history, If we look deeper, we can see that he actually compiled information that would be useful not only in learning about Egypt, but also for understanding it. Learning and understanding, obviously, are two different things. For those who might be wondering where I am going with this, the definitions might help. Learning is knowledge acquired by systematic study in any field of scholarly application, while understanding is the mental process of a person who comprehends.

For example, if we think back to our class discussion, Herodotus was from Greece. He was writing a history of a different culture than his. Naturally, he had learned about Egypt while in Greece; however, he understood what he had learned by his experiences traveling in Egypt.

            Today, most people are not like Herodotus. We travel all over the world without either learning or understanding the culture in which we will be immersed. It is important in today’s world to know where you are going … at least in a travel sense. An example would be when I went to Uganda two summers ago with Walsh. Part of the preparation for the trip was learning the who, what, when, where, and why of Uganda history. Well, at least the recent history anyways. It was then our responsibility to understand what we had learned in the context of our trop. If this had not been in place, all of the students would have been in complete culture shock and probably very confused as to what was going on most of the time.

            Herodotus’s history of Egypt, for me anyways, seemed very much like this type of preparation. Something that people could read in order to learn about Egypt, but also to prepare themselves to travel there. Learning and understanding, even just a small portion about the place that someone travels, can generate a whole different experience during their trip. Different cultures require different actions on the part of the traveler. This is what I have learned during my time abroad, both with my family and Walsh. 

            So, I hope that you enjoyed reading Herodotus’s history of Egypt as much as this history geek did. And if not, I hope that you at least take away a little of what I am trying to pass along. If you are planning to go abroad with Walsh or even just on vacation, remember what Herodotus’s history of Egypt exemplifies – both learning and understanding the places you plan to visit in the future.