47. What has it been like to be in a foreign country for five months?

Without a TV, I have done counted Cross Stitch, read my Kendel and also read the internet  news and on various topics from medicine, education, politics, humor and a great site with hundred of quotes on various topics. As I thought about the answer to the above question, I have used some of those quotes to answer it for myself. I want to share some of my favorites with y’all.

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

 “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

 “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener   (Except Fried Fish heads with yellow,beady eye balls!) ;)

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark

It's important to travel with a sense of humor too...

"I want to shake off the dust of this one-horse town. I want to explore the world. I want to watch TV in a different time zone. I want to visit strange, exotic malls" Homer Simpson

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

 “Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?”
― Erma Bombeck

Callie, Sidney, Kara and Emery: 

You have seen the world

You have traveled everywhere

Seen such beauty and grandeur

Not with your own eyes

But through the eyes of my heart

For I carry you with me

Wherever I go…- Eileen Manassian Ghali

I have worn the dust of many foreign streets, but to brush it off would surely be a crime.
I have the memories of many foreign adventures, but to forget them, would surely be a sin.
So, breath in the dust, and keep the memories in. - Rowland Waring-Flood

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"— Hunter S. Thompson

Travel is the only expense that makes you richer -Erehwon

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” ― G.K. Chesterton

But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” ― Bill Bryson

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.- Gustave Flaubert

 “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” ― Cesare Pavese

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux

All journeys eventually end in the same place, home.” ― Chris Geige

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang (We are both looking forward to that!!)

 The other thing I have done here is dabble again at writing poetry. So for the next few blogs it will be poems that I have written. So fair warning-if you are not into poetry- skip the blogs until # 51!

Have a GREAT day!   Love Ya! Me