Well-Traveled

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Clarissa

November 7, 2013

We are practicing the present perfect tense, and the students have to answer the question, “Have you ever traveled overseas?”

The answers are usually, “No”, “No,” “Mexico,” “Spain,” “Well, I’ve been to California, does that count?”

On student, however, gave a different answer.

“I’ve been to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, South Africa, New Zealand, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Malaysia.”

I thought I was reasonably well-traveled but this list made me feel like a veritable country bumpkin. I stared at the student, and so did everybody else in the class.

“I visited these countries with my mission school,” she explained.

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6 responses to “Well-Traveled”

David Bellamy

November 7, 2013

Scary. Missionaries, in my opinion, do a lot of very destructive things to other cultures.

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Evelina Anville

November 7, 2013

I completely agree with David Bellamy. I think missionaries are frightening. I hate nothing more than “help” being offered on the condition of religious indoctranation.

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titfortat

November 7, 2013

Funny, I was wondering how quick people would jump on the “missionary” aspect of that person. Didn’t take long. One thing is clear though, if or when she ends her religious affiliation she will be more travelled than the vast lot of us. 🙂

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cliff arroyo

November 7, 2013

c

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cliff arroyo

November 7, 2013

you really could use an ‘eidt’ option here 🙂

Anyhoo… There was a time that I would have jumped on the scary missionary bandwagon but I won’t here and now. The people in most of those countries are well able to judge for themselves how much help they want in exchange for how much indoctrination.
Now there are some true missionary horror stories out there and of her list, Peru and Guatemala especially are/were both sites of horrendous missionary misdeeds. But those tend(ed) to be by longterm resident missionaries who had at least partly gone off the rails.

I’m assuming she was there short term involved in some kind of constructive activities like helping to build things or ‘outreach’ which mostly involves socializing with locals (or trying to).
Some years ago a colleague had contacts with a religous group that regularly brought in groups of bright eyed young Americans for ‘outreach’ and I was very happy to turn over a few classes to them to give my students (at just about the same age) some very practical conversation practice. They sat in small groups very much enjoying themselves and there was no religious indoctrination going on that I could detect.

I do wonder what she could do in Malaysia which is far more religiously intolerant than the any of the other countries.

I’d say the biggest downside would be that she would be immersed in a religious bubble and not really get to know (even in the mot superficial way) any of the countries she was passing through.

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ladyleahjane

November 7, 2013

My guess was either missionary or military; I met two boys once, one who had been a missionary, the other who had been a sailor, in a bar. After a few drinks, they descended into a bragging contest about who had had more sex with the locals when they’d been travelling overseas. The sailor won, but the missionary complained that he would have won if they’d counted the girls he’d been travelling with on his missions.

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