Newsletter #5, November 2005

Meaningful Travel
By Katie Lee, BQEF volunteer and Westtown student
"I can remember sitting in the Miami airport waiting for my flight to board. I tried to write in my journal, but my hands were shaking too much to form words. A year in the works, meetings with a teacher, pages of internet research, two guidebooks, e-mails to my host, and late night conversations with a friend… all this preparation could not give me the reassurance to control my shaking hands and trembling nerves...In hours I would be in another country, 14,500 feet above sea level, about to spend three weeks in a city that seemed to me to be a million miles away... I would need to change my money, find safe food and water, learn the complicated Bolivian bus system, teach children how to speak my language, and find my way in the city of La Paz: this prospect terrified me..."

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