February 26, 2020
5 Familiar Travel Words with New Meanings
If you’ve spent any time perusing travel media, you will, no doubt, recognize the 5 words below. They are found everywhere these days in the travel world; they are new buzzwords. What you might not recognize are the definitions we’ve given to these words/concepts. We’ve taken our definitions from the field of education, rolled them up with some thoughts about traveling and sprinkled them with a dose of childhood adventure.
Have a look and see if you can connect our definitions with visions for your own travels:
AUTHENTIC
The way something really happens and in the place it usually happens, done by people that have a passion for it. This means, of course, you won’t always find authentic “things” happening in the most beautiful places around the world. The vats for dying leather in Morocco are gorgeous in color but they are the smelliest places you can imagine. For real!
EXPERIENCE
Feeling something, not just seeing it or hearing it or being told about it. But getting to the heart of it and understanding it. Or, wanting to know more about it because it captured your feelings.
IMMERSIVE
Getting involved and becoming part of the action; being asked your thoughts and opinion. Sometimes this can mean creating something yourself, right there on the spot or later, after you’ve had time to absorb it all. Pushing a button or opening a door to find the correct answer is not an immersive experience!
PERSONAL
The way YOU want something to be or to happen. Your way of exploring or discovering, not the way a guidebook tells you to do it! Not necessarily the way your friends say is the best and only way to do it either! You have to search inside yourself for who you are and for your way of doing things!
EXPLORE/DISCOVER
Becoming familiar with a new culture, new geography, new history, new food, new way things happen --- by testing or experimenting with it all. Traveling to a new place is just the beginning of your exploring. What you DO with what you see, hear, smell, taste feel, etc. is when your exploring begins! Exploring gets revved –up when you dare to go beyond the basics! See how you and the world connect.