Rick Stevens

While reading this selection of Stevens' book, there were a couple sections that stuck out to me. The first was the line that stated "traveling with no understanding of the local history is like going to a 3D movie and deciding not to bother with the glasses." Before I took my trip to Costa Rica, our Spanish teacher was adamant about us understanding the history to a certain extent, and I feel like it really helped us understand the culture when we were there. Especially when we visited schools, it was helpful to have background on their school system so we were not completely blind. Oppositely, when I traveled to the Dominican Republic, I knew absolutely none of the history. It made me feel disconnected from the country since I didn't really know anything about it. The second part of this reading that I found interesting was the idea of traveling and being in different countries as their history unfolds. Arguably less important than a new building being revealed in Germany, I was in Canada when marijuana was legalized, which made for an interesting experience. There were large groups of protestors fighting each other in the streets downtown and news stations everywhere. The next day, I looked online and found images of stories of events that I watched from the sideline.