“One day…we’re going to take an Alaska cruise with the entire family, but our summers are just too busy”; “We really want to travel over to Europe, but we’re waiting until the kids are older”. Do these statements sound familiar to you? The average North American family doesn’t think they spend enough time together.
Between school, work, sports, and extracurricular activities it’s no surprise that we are all feeling disconnected and burned out. The best way to reconnect with your loved ones is to get away. No distractions and no excuses: just you and your parents, kids or Grandkids spending “quality time”, enjoying each other’s company and maybe even experiencing an unfamiliar culture together. “Next Year, maybe” turns into the year after that...and so forth...until you “blink” and your parents are too old to travel or your children don't want to anymore...
Travel is proven to be a wonderful learning tool for children. Seeing how people live in other countries can open their minds and hearts and expand their imagination exponentially. Here are a few things that travel can provide for your family:
1. It can create lasting relationships...both between your own family members and people you meet while on the road. These folks that you run into along the way give you a glimpse of what life is like outside your regular circle of friends and can give you a fresh perspective on how other cultures live.
2. You can learn another language…There is something very exciting about being able to throw around a few words of Italian, knowing how to say hello and thank you in French, or ordering off of a menu written totally in Greek and hoping you don’t end up with something inedible! And...knowing that if you do accidentally order bull's testicles, that your whole family will still be laughing about it 20 years from now!
3. It gives you and your family perspective…Meeting folks from other cultures will teach you that the way you look at the world (maybe through the distorted lens of our mass media) is not the way everybody does – and that you could be dead wrong about some things!
Are you reading this and thinking “Boy…I’ve always wanted to take the family to my home country”? If you want to do it now, you’ve probably always wanted to. You’ve imagined it, daydreamed about it, envisioned it. Guess what? Now’s the time to DO IT! I have several vacations on my desk right now for folks just like you, who are wanting to finally take their family on a river or ocean cruise! Remember…time is ticking away!