Travel means to me exploring outside of your comfort zone. Travel is always an opportunity to experience what “others” think of you, but more importantly how your perceptions change when you encounter them. Peoples’ views or traditional ways of thinking are usually challenged by traveling even if one chooses not to consider others’ perspectives. Of course, travel doesn’t change how someone sees the world, but it teaches what it would be like otherwise. Maya Angelou, the famous poet once said, “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.”

We always see on the news countries sending diplomats to other countries in order to reach an agreement or ease tensions between them. Nations try to comprehend other countries’ point of views, and that requires traveling and exchange of ideas. Another example is that I have met both people from the Middle East and America. When you see all of the propaganda on the media of how Americans and Middle Easterners have adverse views on each other, it is not quite true. In fact Arabs will say positive things about Americans, while Americans college students who went study abroad programs in the Middle East love talking about Arab cuisines and how welcoming they were to them when they come home. One can never appreciate how the world is like if he or she does not travel as a political act.