What We Are About to See?

Brainstorming sticky notes!

Saturday May 2, 2015. On an uneventful evening, Kelsey decided to put away her paper due in a week (together with her determination to be "proactive"---it can wait after all) and started planning the stops on our way. She clicked the mouse key to drag around the icons to test what was the best route to cover the maximum scenes with minimum driving.

One by one I heard the place names which had only appeared in my readings in my geography textbooks. Philadelphia, Mount Rushmore, Old Faithful... I remembered my experience with two Australian travelers in a hostel in Jakarta. They asked me where I wanted to go in the afternoon, I listed some places I found online. They were surprised, asking me why I wanted to go to the widely publicized places. I was surprised too, thinking "Wow, those Western travelers are too cool to see tourist attractions!"

So I asked Kelsey, "Would Americans still want to go to the popular tourist attractions?" She answered without hesitation, "Sure, I think as an American, those places should be visited at least once." Today Rachel, another roommate of mine also gave a similar answer. So not all "Westerners" are "too cool to see tourist attractions." Another lesson on the variations of people.

Kelsey studying the route

I thought of another extreme of travelling, that is "get out of the car, take a picture, and go." Some people criticize this kind of travelling, saying that it is a shallow way of travelling, but I think it depends on the purpose of travelling. After all, seeing something in one's own eyes is different from seeing it from the computer screen. Isn't it a nice trip if you could let the images in your brain come alive and fresh?

Kelsey was excited to find the dinosaur park on the way. I hadn't thought that dinosaurs would have such attraction to an American girl. My question: Is it an American thing or a Kelsey thing?

She also shared with me a Kia commercial. It seems that besides driving her Kia, taking pictures, listening to songs, doing interviews, we are also going to do a dance! Only if someone could give us a lead on where to get those Hamster masks!