My Love For Travel – Academic Inquiry and Writing Fall 25 (02H)

After multiple moments of reflection and when creating my visualization I have narrowed down my countless interests into my core four. These interests consist of travel, the ocean, athletics, and the arts. These are the interest that I found to be the stem of the things that I love.

Travel: I am fascinated in discovering different perspectives and experiencing things in person rather than researching online. With travel I get to learn things first hand, see and experience new things and see life through a different lens. Although my trip to Greece jump started my interest the show Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain reinforced the same feelings I felt when being abroad.

The Ocean: This one stemmed from a research project on an aquatic animal in middle school. I was researching orcas and ended up doing a deep dive on different types of aquatic animals watching countless documentaries. What really reinforced this though was my love for swimming (which leads into the next interest). I take so much joy in swimming in the ocean and just being at the beach in general making the beach one of my favorite places on earth. I wanted to do anything that I could to learn about my favorite place and protect it as best as I could. I have also dedicated a lot of time to this interest as it was the inspiration for my Girls Scout Gold Award project.

Athletics: All my life there was at least one sport that I was interested in. My parents had decided to put me in swim lessons starting when I was a baby so swimming has been a constant presence throughout my entire life. When I reached high school I started to branch out and started both track and golf. Golf however earned itself a special place in my heart as it was the only sport that challenged my mentally. There is so many ups and downs to just one round and because there was so much to think about this sport left no room to allow any of your problems to infiltrate your mind. However there is another sport that has some real estate in my heart and that is rugby. I started playing first semester in my freshman year and I fell in love. Rugby challenges me physically and gives me a rush of adrenaline that no rollercoaster has ever made me experience.

The Arts: When I was little I used to draw the pictures from the books I read. This gave me an appreciation for the writing in the books as well as the art inside of them. As I grew older and the books I read stopped having pictures I would appreciate art and writing separately. My junior year of high school is where this interest truly became prominent. As my favorite podcaster, Britney Broski, would sometimes do book reviews, breakdown essays, and do research on different paintings and statues. This brought me right back to an interest I had when I was a kid.

My Visualization:

The Interest I Chose

The main interest that I am choosing for this post is travel. This was the interest that unlocked such a high level of curiosity within me. I am passionate about learning about the world and it fills me with wonder to experience things that I don’t know. Traveling makes me feel like a little kid again, learning about what’s around them.

My Experience

My love for travel began during my vacation at the end of 5th grade when we traveled to Greece. Prior to this I hadn’t been out of the country or been exposed to any culture that didn’t belong to my family. So just the thought of being exposed to new things fills me with a child like excitement. I also adore every aspect of the traveling process, the journey itself, the moment of arrival, and the opportunity to immerse myself in country’s beauty, traditions, and experience their everyday life firsthand. In Greece I fell in love with the ancient ruins, the entire country was so rich in history. I was able to learn so much about greek mythology and this jump started my curiosity about what new places had to offer. I was lucky enough to experience this to the next level this past summer. In July my friend and her mom took me with them on their vacation to Turkey. Since my friend’s mom was born and raised in Turkey she was able to give us a perspective that other tourists may not have gotten to experience. One day we took a roadtrip to the Turkish countryside where we were so far away from the city you could see every star in the sky. Here we got to stay in this gorgeous quiet village with my friend’s relatives, and we were fortunate enough to see day to day life and eat a meal that was fully homegrown. I also made a couple friends when I was in Turkey were we would have conversations about our different cultures and we would take turns exchanging info, and this was actually my favorite part of the entire trip. I learned so much and I am so grateful to have this experience.

Traveling has encourages me to expand my horizons in multiple aspects of my life, whether it is new foods, experiences, or talking to new people. Additionally, I learned that I prefer to learn new things by experiencing them rather than reading about them or seeing things online, but there is one exception to this. The one piece of media that encapsulates my experience with traveling is the show The Complete Unknown by Anthony Bourdain. In his show he explores the hidden corners of the world, and he approached cultures with authenticity and respect which perfectly displays what it felt like for me to travel.

Features Prompting my Experience

When I was in middle school there would be one Sunday every month where my dad would call me over to watch the new episode of Parts Unknown. At first I only agreed because watching the show allowed me to stay up past my bedtime, but I started really get into the show and watching with my dad became my favorite thing about Sundays. Parts Unknown is a travel and food documentary series where chef and writer Anthony Bourdain, would travel the world exploring both tourist destinations and places that weren’t as known. Each episode gave an in depth look at the food, culture, and history of the country that he was visiting. He had such an authentic and unfiltered approach to the show and you could tell that nothing was ever staged. His main focus in the show was to highlight the voices of locals. Bourdain would often share meals in homes, small restaurants, or street markets, and he wasn’t afraid to discuss difficult topics like war, poverty, or social change. I held such a deep appreciation for how masterfully he would tell a story and describe each dish he tasted. In the way Bourdain spoke about his experiences you could tell that he held such a deep respect and appreciation for each culture he explored which was something that I admired. There were so many good episodes of the show but the one I remembered most vividly was when Bourdain went to Vietnam and took Barack Obama on a little tour. Together they had good conversations about the culture, talked to locals, and shared a meal together. I remembered the impact of this episode and the way that it was able to capture all the good parts of the show as a whole.

The Technology Behind My Experience

What I believe enhanced my experience with this documentary was the fact that it was so authentic and the technology that I believe enhanced this experience was the cinematography. The small details such as the lighting, focus and camera movement helped convey to the audience that no part of the show was staged. As also seen in the clip above the lighting stayed very natural to the environment they were filming in, there was still light to ensure that the subject could be seen on camera but it was never harsh. The camera movement of the videographer was a big part in the authenticity as it very obvious that there was a human behind the camera. The slight movement of the camera or unsteady panning in certain clips made the show feel like it wasn’t a big production. Lasly, the additional clips the director added of candid shots of residents. Having these clips where locals were the main focus also helped hammer home the idea that the show was about the country he visits and the people who live there.