I'm at my alma mater right now, enjoying a late breakfast with good friends. Where are you right now, sitting there with your eyes peeled to this great new content below? Well, wherever you are, enjoy.

Advice for Going Somewhere Different

As I continue to plow through my memories from Fiji and recount the tales, I always loop back to the idea of: How could we have better prepared ourselves for this very different culture? ...especially when we didn't know it was going to be so different? I was surprised this week to check out my YouTube subscriptions and see this video post from Tony Bourdain himself, answering the question: What advice would you give for people going to a very different culture?

Good advice, and I think I'd like to add to his answer:

1. Read a travel narrative or cultural feature from someone who spent a good amount of time there.

2. Prepare yourself mentally to the concept of partially surrendering your idea of right and wrong. Most cultures, even seemingly like-minded ones, do things very differently.

Is Air Travel Really Travel?

I personally find flying to be an interesting aspect of a trip, a thoroughly disorienting one that has a culture of its own, but I am certainly prone to admiring surface travel and movement while firmly on Earth. World Hum recently interviewed Seth Stevenson about his recent book covering a RTW trip he just completed via surface travel. The following is Seth's explanation of why he thinks air travel isn't really travel:

Flying is like teleporting between two points. The flight itself is an empty, meaningless interlude. Once the flight is over, you never think or speak of it again—unless it’s to complain about the turbulence or the shrieking child sitting behind you. By contrast, being on a ship or a train moving between point A and point B is a journey unto itself, full of ground-level scenery, local culture and moments of quiet contemplation. A surface voyage is often memorable, and on occasion transcendent.

Mt. Everest Like Mallory

Still can't get over my thing for Mt. Everest. Coming out in August, The Wildest Dream sounds like a movie I'd like to see. Good work, National Geographic.

Other Discoveries

Join the discussion about Alternative Female Travelers if you feel the women's travel industry is skewed toward the girly girl, afraid to move past sunset in a foreign place...or comment if you feel it's right on track.

Great advice for bloggers on staying accessible but finding that balance and scale as well. I love it when people contact me with questions as it fuels my future work and helps me figure out what my readers want to know about!

Update on Nomadderwhere

My April activities are complete! A relaxing weekend in Chicago with friends and family, a much-appreciated and needed weekend away with my childhood friends at the races, and a trip back to the glory days at my alma mater have all set me back on track in America. My life isn't all about surviving in the tropical bush or answering e-mails.

For those of you who follow me on twitter, you may know my grandmother passed away two weeks ago. I apologize if my quality of work falls a bit in this next month or two, because this is one death that will keep hitting me for a while. Soon to come is a post about her and the side of her I don't yet know all about: her world traveling side. The research begins this week. She was one cool lady.

Also, next week will bring news of my latest endeavor...my very first paying travel gig! Come back and check out what I'm talking about!

1 Minute or Less Moments: This week on my Nomadderwhere Facebook Fan page I have published three more raw clips from our Fijian adventure. These would include machete spinning, fire swirling, and the Fijian jungle!