I’ve begun another journey around Central America: I landed in Guatemala City Airport at 9pm on Wednesday night and am now writing from my hostel in Antigua. I’ll be in the area for the next two months: not coming back until winter’s really over this time!
I’ve thought about writing a blog for years. I’ve had my Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter, but that’s only once a month at most.
Honestly, I’ve been wary of starting a blog because I’ve had mixed feelings about the medium. Blogs are first drafts. They aren’t very edited: what you see is what you get and you get A LOT from some. I think the bottom line is whether or not you actually have something to say in a post. I really don’t want to waste my readers’ time or mine for that matter: I don’t want blogging about my experiences to get in the way of experiencing them.
But recording ones experiences can definitely enhance them, as my newsletters have for me, and there have been so many stories I’ve wanted to share over the years but didn’t have room for in my newsletter. And I do have a lot to say about education, unschooling, worldschooling, and travel and hopefully this will be a way for me to connect with people interested in what I have to say. I’ll also write about languages I’m learning because that’s a major passion of mine even before I started travelling.
A good thing about blogs is I can mark the topics that are covered in each entry. So if you’re interested in education and travel but not language, or language and travel but not education, then you can choose entries accordingly.
I’ll definitely talk about the unschooling scene. It’s meant so much to me to speak at these huge unschooling gatherings around the U.S. these last few years and meet so many unschoolers: there were 700+ people at gatherings I went to in Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Ohio. I think it’s a really exciting time for unschooling.
I also hope I can to speak to people who don’t like the term or the scene of “unschooling” but do support people, young and old, being empowered, informed, and free. I’ve had my issues with the term unschooling and the application of unschooling but I think in the end it’s one part of a whole education and whole life that includes worldschooling, homeschooling, unschooling, and even some school. I’ll explain what I mean by all that later!
This is getting to be long for a blog post and I haven’t even gotten to any stories of Guatemala! Instead, I’ll just share some photos from around the beautiful colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala and get to the stories in the next post.
Take care,
Eli
Parque Central in Antigua in full bloom.
Beauty contest winner at the head of a parade leaving the Parque Central in Antigua.
Burger King and Queen in Antigua parade.
