Ricki Stevenson, The owner of the Black Paris tour company, mentioned the difference in being a tourist and a traveler. A traveler...travels and researched the language, cultural dress, history, even the government policy. What I picked up is that a traveler immerses themselves in the culture, respecting its differences and similarities to their own. A tourist visits a place, picks up an "I (heart)__" t-shirt, without trying to learn the culture, and goes home unchanged. In preparing to go to France I quickly learned some rudimentary French. I couldn't have given a lecture on French history or anything, but I was able to introduce myself and communicate that I didn't understand something in French. I also made an effort to always speak the French that I knew. When stuck, I reverted back to English or even Spanish as that is my unofficial second-ish language.
After hearing the tourist vs traveler spiel, I said to myself "Kendra T is gonna be a Traveler!"
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