As I write this, I'm waiting for our students to return from their weXplore, a five-day excursion that takes students beyond their host city for immersive cultural experiences. For the past two months, we as a school have called Maun, Botswana, our home. It's a small town on the edge of the Okavango Delta and, for many travelers, a doorway into Africa. But Maun is only one perspective, and it...
Read MoreSeveral years ago, when I started traveling a LOT on business, I found that one of the best things to do in a city, old or new to me, was walk. And when I say walk, I mean WALK. Like 10, 12, 15 kilometres a day. Walk to meetings, walk to museums, walk everywhere.
So, in Spain, I bought these very cool dark brown Camper boots. These were great boots. Resilient, great soles, really well-put-together. Reliable. These boots were made for walking.
And in walking around all these great cities (Munich, Barcelona, Madrid, London, Beijing, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, Bogota, Santiago, Berlin, Stockholm, just to name a few) I discovered that I was meeting people who had the exact same qualities as these walking boots. They were resilient, had great souls (sorry for the pun) and were just solid, amazing people.
Well, after many, many walks and one not-so-great but really expensive repair job done in London, I retired my boots in a Harbin, China hotel room a few months ago, leaving them in a bag for charity along with a couple of shirts and a nice Diesel sweater that would keep some resilient resident of Heilongjiang province warm during chilly Northern Chinese winter nights.
The next time I’m in Madrid, I’m going to get another pair of Camper boots and I don’t want them to last forever. I want to experience more of the world in them and then commit them to my past, to a kind of personal history.
For our students at THINK Global school, the opportunity to leave each city with a keepsake, some “thing” as a memory, is important. It becomes something they carry with them, literally, as they go through their journey with our school.
THINK Global School: mobile, global, lifelong.