I’ve lived in the USA for 25 years now, but am originally from southern Africa. I have also lived in Australia, France (Paris), and Japan, so feel a bit like a citizen of the world. I’ve been traveling since the age of 8 when I went with my grandmother from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to England. We traveled by boat from Cape Town to London and it took 2 weeks. I remember that we stopped at the Canary Islands, where the people speak Spanish, and I was fascinated by a different language that I couldn’t understand. I determined to learn to understand. I never did learn to speak Spanish fluently, but did learn Afrikaans (a Dutch derivative), some German, a little Greek, and am reasonably fluent in French---although that gets rusty very quickly if I don’t use it. Even from that young age I began to get the idea that travel and multicultural understanding were very important for having peoples from different parts of the world try and get along together. I still believe that and feel that when we travel and see that other people do things differently it helps to broaden our knowledge of the world and hopefully our tolerance for things/customs/ideas that are different, the emphasis being that different does not mean wrong. I traveled locally in southern Africa as a teen with my family and also as a young adult. It was only after I and my husband had worked for a few years and saved up that we could take a “big trip” for 3 months to Europe, and since then we travel whenever we can---plotting and planning the next trip. My husband does a lot of international research, so he attends conferences, workshops etc and after our kids grew up and left home I was able to accompany him more and more. My professional training is in Clinical Psychology, but besides counseling I now also teach ESL to internationals at our university as I understand what it feels like to be in a country and not to understand the language, not to be able to communicate. Fortunately, at some of the places my husband visits, I am also able to teach ESL, so it works in well. Right from that first trip at age 8 I kept a travel journal and still do. Those notes have led to many travel articles, which have been published in many different places. We always carry a camera too and have learned how to document things along the way, making for an even richer experience. Best travel advice: Travel light, travel light, travel light. Pack so you can carry your own bags at all times, on and off buses, trains , up and down stairs etc. If you can’t carry it, you can’t take it.

I’ve lived in the USA for 25 years now, but am originally from southern Africa. I have also lived in Australia, France (Paris), and Japan, so feel a bit like a citizen of the world. I’ve been traveling since the age of 8 when I went with my grandmother from Rhodesia more+