By CAMMIE BAGLEY
Staff Writer
As young adults in college, we are given a vast amount of opportunities to take advantage of.
One of the biggest and most important ones that we should jump head first into is the chance to travel. The earth is full of places to go, see, experience and fall in love with.
Some places that stand out the most as places that one should travel to include England, Ireland, Italy and France. While these are just a few of the amazing places to go see, they have some wonderful novelties to offer.
This past summer, I spent a month in the south of England visiting different cities. One of my favorite things I got to experience was summer solstice at Stonehenge. It was an experience I will never forget.
If you don’t already know, Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones dating back to 3000-2000 B.C. and no one knows exactly how they got there. Once a year, at summer solstice, people from all over the country gather around the rocks and spend the night to wait for the sun to rise directly between the stones. It was an indescribable experience.
Timothy Lytle, professor of philosophy and religion has traveled to the country of Ireland multiple times.
Lyttle said, “The mountains, the rivers, the cliffsides and the ocean shores are stunningly beautiful.” He also said that he got to see the Cliffs of Moher.
He continued to say, “Travel changes you by opening your mind to new things and helping to see familiar things in a new perspective. We see new things, new places, new people, and we also come home to see the place in a new way for the first time.”
Colt Woodall, a Piedmont graduate student, travelled to Italy on a maymester. Woodall said, “Venice is my absolute favorite place in the world. No streets, no cars, just small boats and bridges. I’d never seen anything like it.”
Woodall continued to say, “People from other countries don’t just speak differently, they think differently. This is something that you can’t understand unless you get out and expand your horizons.”
Barbra Brown Taylor, the Butman Professor of Religion, has been to over 30 countries around the world. Taylor explains how kind people are when traveling, “The people in Peru were magical. While I was hiking Machu Picchu and the trail reached 12,000 feet, I started having hallucinations. The only reason I made it to our destination was because our guide walked behind us playing a wooden flute.”
She continued to say, “The greatest value, I think, is discovering how essentially kind most people are to foreigners. That has taught me how important it is to reach out to strangers myself.”
It may seem overwhelming to think about all of the places that you can simply board a plane and get to within a couple hours, but don’t let that stop you. Travelling will change your life in a way that opens your eyes and heart to possibilities you didn’t know existed.
So, embrace your wanderlust while you can and get out in this alluring world to find what it has to offer you.