What a great post! Go read it…go read it now!  Travel can be such a great learning and life changing experience!

"We Americans are reared with the adage ringing in our ears, “Curiosity kills the cat.” To that, I say an emphatic bull#@%*! In fact, Arnold Edinborough says it this way, “Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.”

So true. Be curious! Die nobly!

"I grew up the child of a small southern community in rural USA where most of the residents spend their life and death in a tiny sphere of several miles. Somehow, at the age of twenty-five, I escaped the confines of rural southern culture and moved to the international melting pot called South Florida. Words cannot adequately describe the culture shock of this naive Tennessee country boy and family upon encountering the perceptual view of New Yorkers, Bostonians, New Jerseyans, Cubans, Latinos and the Caribbean."

Culture shock is good! Shock your kids with a trip to a location outside of their comfort zone! Shoot, shock yourselves!

"We need to be shaken from our passivity and isolation. If we consider our world to be boring—it will duly meet our expectations. Travel, on the other hand, causes us to perceive and view the importance of what we’ve already seen with new eyes. As Thoreau challenges us, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

I couldn't agree more. Get shaken from your passivity and isolation! Go and "see"! Love it!