travel

This is challenging and expensive. Raising a family and staying employed are priorities but do you also have a bucket list?  Somewhere to keep dreams alive, somewhere for travel goals. If not, you should start one. This should have all the places you've ever wanted to visit. Don't worry about when or how much. Just make a list and keep it somewhere you can find it.  When the opportunity presents itself you'll be one step ahead of the game and already have some ideas. 

I believe it's in our genes. We are all wanderers on some level. The need to see new horizons, travel far and experience the culture of distant people is a necessary part of our life. Some people would disagree and say "I'm happy right here". I know people like this that have never left the town they were born in. This is ok too. Others, like us, have a quest, a desire to go, a need to see how different people live. How they exist, what they eat, what they do for a living.  

Traveling and dining in far away lands provides this experience like nothing else. Trying to communicate with others when neither of you speak the language is challenging. But it also shows you how far an expression can go and that deep down we're really not that different. 

When we do travel I like to have an idea of what to see and physically where we are going in relation to other POI's (points of interest). An awareness of the region helps you  get the most out of your trip. Many people including myself use Trip Advisor but my primary tool is Google Maps. It provides lots of good information and it also has  features that allow you to see the locale and other potential POI's. Google Maps will also allow you to create custom maps, specific lists of POI's for future reference and the ability to send driving instructions to yours or another smart phone. 

In recent trip to Japan we found the language completely foreign. Spanish is one thing that is at least somewhat recognizable. It's one of those things that you know it's coming but when you see Japanese with over 3000 symbols in their alphabet it is strange and very complex. The Japanese even phrase their sentences differently than we do in English.  Google Translate to the rescue. For shoppers and talkers alike it has "camera" and "conversation" modes. You speak and it translates, announces and spells out on the screen what you said in another language. Just amazing! Camera mode allows you to just point it at text. For instance, labels on a package and viola' the foreign language changes to English on the screen.  This was a real game changer for us. I think almost everyone in our tour group downloaded the app and started using it.