subject: Make Your US Road Trip Complete with Wireless Internet [print this page] Make Your US Road Trip Complete with Wireless Internet
More and more students from the United States are choosing to study abroad while they are attending college. In the past decade there has been over a one hundred and thirty percent increase in the number of students studying abroad. This past year it was up to almost to three hundred thousand students! The Obama administration including his wife Michelle has had a huge part in this and supports study abroad vocally encouraging all students to take advantage of the opportunity to travel no matter what they are studying. If you look up the numbers on your wireless broadband, only six percent of those studying abroad are foreign language majors. The importance of cultural exchange in all fields is quite important, for both tolerance and for increasing globalization. Students are studying everywhere from China to England, Spain to Argentina, the Netherlands to New Zealand. While studying abroad students gain the opportunity to live in a culture other than their own, make new friends, adopt new cultural practices, study a language and perhaps even travel more of the world than they could have previously.
There seems to be a phenomenon being born of the study abroad generation. Many students are realizing that they know more of foreign countries and continents than they do of their own country. The United States is a vast and diverse country and many people only know a hand full of states out of the fifty one. A common desire of students returning to the United States after being abroad for a semester or two is to travel cross country and go on a road trip of their own motherland. There are so many different places in the US to visit. Each region boasts its own flavor, history, past times and culture. If one has never been to the South of the United States you don't know a whole part of the magnificent country. You may not have ever tried a deep fried margarita, grits or seen tobacco fields. Those who have never ventured west wouldn't know the feeling of a winter rain in Los Angeles, tasted fresh fruit from a farmers market in Portland or climbed up a world famous hilly road in San Francisco. To see a New England autumn is something everyone should do in their life. Or to see the Grand Canyon, downtown New Orleans or the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh are all things everyone should also have the chance to do.
Students are taking planes, trains, busses and cars all over the US to get to know where they came from as well as where they've been. Though sometimes it can be much too costly with gas prices the way they are. Also to find hostels as readily as one can in a foreign country is sometimes a bit more difficult. Students are taking some clothes, Raybans, and their computer with wireless internet plugged in and nothing else. Some are even selling all of their possessions to get around. With the help of the non-profit organization Couch Surfing, an element of the hippy generation is being reborn. People are able to meet new people who offer to put them up in their homes in almost every state.
Globalization is making people want to get back to the Woodstock type roots left far behind. Only this time everyone will be looking up what concert or caf to go to on Google with 4G speed on their laptops. Getting back to roots is important, but learning a bit along the way is just as good.
