Travel Tip #6: Creating Relationships While Abroad

Whenever traveling on a vacation or studying abroad, you're bound to create some type of friendship with a new face.  This is more common, though, when studying abroad.  When studying abroad, you're gone for an extended period of time, without having your friends and family there and needing someone to spend your extra time with.  Creating new friendships and networking with new people, especially in another country, is a great experience.  While it is great to create new relationships while abroad, you must also be smart about the relationships you make.

The benefits of making new relationships are obvious.  You have people to hangout with, create networks to potentially help your future, and a person to keep in touch with once you have returned home.  The downfall is letting yourself get too attached or too romantically involved.  Sure you may find the love of your life while you're overseas, but don't let this idea cloud your common sense.  Don't get sexually involved either, you don't know what repercussions could come from that as well.

Above all, just use your common sense and enjoy your time you have while overseas.  Create new friendships and stay in touch after you've come home.  You never know how these relationships may help you in the future!

Similar Pride and Honor Across the Sea

June 5th, 2009 was a day in which I never existed.  No I did not die and return back to life, but I was settled on the biggest plane I had ever been on crossing the International Dateline heading towards Australia.  The memories aren't quite as strong which each new passing year, but for what ever reason why I'm captivated by that country lives on.  In honor of Memorial day last week, I noticed pictures from Australia that relate to war memorials we have in D.C. but found in Australia.

Roll of Honour

The capital of Australia is Canberra, with a lot of open area surrounding it.  Unlike Washington D.C. everything is not just a hop, skip, and a jump away.  You will find other similarities though, such as a Senate and House of Representatives, although their government is ran in a British structure with their Prime Minister as the country's leader.  You will also see war memorials and monuments dedicated to those who had served in the Australian military because they were dragged into another country's battle as a helpful ally.  I found all the monuments to be touching, beautiful, and a great way to honor those.  The Roll of Honour is similar to the Vietnam Wall in Washington D.C., but here visitors place red poppies in the wall as a symbol for those who lost their lives in battle.  Also like us Americans, Canberra holds a special tomb to the Australian Unknown Soldier, though not as heavily guarded as the Tomb of the Unknown Solider in Washington D.C.

Like us Americans, Australians really show their pride and love for their country in their nation's capital.  The war memorials I was so lucky to see allowed me to have a deeper connection with Australia than I ever thought possible.