How Travel Can Change Your Life
Often times we take vacations to relax and unwind, forget about whatever has been causing us stress back home, and to simply enjoy a change of scenery. After the trip is over, we go back home and return to business as usual. But sometimes, a trip can be life changing and for one family of four, a trip to Costa Rica changed their lives forever.
The Letsingers, Nancy, her husband Eric, and their two daughters, 10 and 13 years old, decided to take a trip to Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic and get away from the hustle and bustle of life in D.C. area. Between 50-60 hour work weeks for Nancy and Eric, school for the girls, plus extracurricular activities, the Letsingers felt maxed out and decided that some time away would be good for everyone. Taking two months off of work and school is not an easy thing to do and many people will say that it simply isn’t possible. This is perhaps the first lesson learned through traveling: anything is possible if you decide it is.
Most often the hardest part of planning a trip is deciding to do it. The initial purchase of a plane ticket or sometimes the simple verbalization that you’re putting a trip together is often all it takes to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Once the Letsingers decided they were going to take the time to bond as a family in Costa Rica, the rest fell into place.
The family of four used their time aboard to work as a team, planning events and details together as the trip progressed. Nancy and Eric, who were interviewed by The Huffington Post about their time aboard said they wanted to make sure their trip involved some sort of community service and so the family volunteered at an orphanage and stayed with a host family, which both of the girls loved. The time aboard helped the girls, who had never been out of the country, become more willing to try new things upon returning home and Eric and Nancy both find themselves more able to enjoy simple pleasures, such as enjoying a peaceful morning.
While some vacations are nothing more than a brief break from the normal routine other trips have the potential to transform our lives. New experiences, new relationships, and exposure to different cultures can help us become more tolerant, more understanding, and bolder back home. Spending time aboard, such as in Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, reminds us that the world is a very large place, filled with all different types of people, and that the life we are living is just one possibility out of billions of the life we could be living.
Upon returning home, Nancy, Eric, and their two daughters feel as though their two months traveling in Costa Rica and The Dominican Republic has truly changed their lives forever and the experiences they had while aboard will not be forgotten. Plan your trip to Costa Rica and start changing your life today.
