How does this guy consider himself a world traveller?

...It is people like this that make me question where I am really from. http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_15139346?src=yahoohome&nclick_check=1

This article talks about a man who at the age of 25 made it his goal to visit every country in the world. Personally that is sort of my goal as well. He has three countries to go which are Cuba, Somalia, and Libya. However my opinion is that he has not really travelled to these countries that he says he has gone to because he refuses to venture outside the cities, will not try local foods, and also always stays in specific hotels. He insists on Mcdonalds and French Fries. Also I am wondering how he managed to get into Saudi Arabia as we are a country that does not issue tourist visas. And I'm wondering how he managed not to get arrested in Lebanon or Syria for having visited Israel. Syria and Lebanon if I remember correctly will arrest you if your passport says you have visited Israel. There may be exceptions to that rule but I do not know what they are.

Its people like this that make me question my nationality and songs like God Bless the USA which I know is a patriotic song but I still question if I am American or not after reading about people like the guy in the article. A lot of Americans are always saying that the US is the best country in the world and I have doubted that for some time, especially after having living overseas. I think once I start school again I need to look into a study abroad program for a semester somewhere in Europe possibly in the UK or Ireland. At this point I consider myself American by birth, culturally however I am not however I am not sure what culture I belong to.

Update

Well so far no luck with finding a job. I interviewed at Wal Mart and though the interview went pretty well I didn't get the job. Oh well its life and lets move on. No I'm looking elsewhere for a job. So right now I am doing odd jobs around my Aunts house such as yardwork and moving boxes of food storage to her food storage closet downstairs in her basement.

Weatherwise I am really enjoying it up here. Unfortunately I haven't really met anyone my age. What I mean is I have met someone close to my age but he lives in the St George area which is about a 4 hour drive away. His Mom and my Aunt have been friends for over 30 years and were best friends when they used to live in Virginia. In fact her husband and my Dad used to be room-mates when they lived in Virginia. So our families go pretty far back but I had never met them until I stopped for the night at their house on my way up to my Aunts house.

So all in all I think its been a good decision so far to move up here.

Well I made it to Utah

I made it to my Aunts house in Utah yesterday and it feels weird because they are an hour ahead of Arizona timewise. I ended up stopping for the night Friday at a family friends house in the St George area because it took longer than expected to get to Utah thanks to the Hoover Dam which takes forever to get across and Las Vegas freeway traffic and I had to stop for gas in Vegas and there are a lot of rude drivers there. Well now if you'll excuse me I need to go finish making pasta salad.

Wow

OK I was bored and on the internet and found out randomly that Chester Bennington the lead singer for Linkin Park lives in Gilbert about 10 minutes or 5 miles away from my old house there. How weird is that?

Disaster Zone

My room at the moment is a disaster zone. I am packing up my stuff and at the moment am about 3/4 of the way done but I have stuff all over the floor, extra boxes that I no longer need because I repacked my stuff so it would fit better into other boxes so I wouldn't use so many and so that they would all fit in my truck bed. I've stuff my minifridge with clothing. I've also got some trashbags where I am going to stuff my bedding into and just load it into the cab of my truck when I leave. Basically my room is a mess at this point. I need to finish by tomorrow. Friday when I actually drive to Utah is going to be interesting. I'm starting over in a new place that I have visited a couple of times but never lived there. I know a couple of people up there but not like Maricopa County which had all the drama from my first High School which followed me down to Thatcher.

I'm leaving Arizona and hopefully for good! I might come down to visit but I have no intention of moving back down to Arizona any time soon. I have not really liked this State since I moved here in 3rd grade from Maryland and now I finally get my chance to get out of here. My only disappointment at this point is that I could not have done it sooner and that I am not moving back East to Maryland or Virginia. That will hopefully happen within the next few years though. I hope to be able to visit Virginia within the next two years at least. I might be moving there after Utah. My Mom and Dad want me to stay in one place and finish a degree but I miss living back East. I know its weird as I have not lived there for about 10 years now but I still have memories of green grass, summer rain showers, snow in the winter, the colours of the leaves changing in the fall and then the leaves falling off the trees, snowball fights in the winter, going to the beach in North Carolina and the water in the Atlantic is not freezing cold unlike the Pacific. Maryland and Virginia actually have 4 seasons, something that Arizona does not. Arizona has two seasons, warm and bloody hot! This state has not felt like home to me something that I do not think my parents have realised. Yes I know we moved out here for work and for my sisters health as the dryer climate here does not trigger her asthma but as I do not live with my family anymore I am ready to move on. The East is my Home, not the West.

!##$@@$@#@!*&%

I'm a little frustrated right now. It turns out my last final is on Wednesday evening and all of the rest of my finals are on Monday and Tuesday. I was hoping to leave here Wednesday afternoon, spend the night at a friends house in Gilbert and then finish my drive to Utah. I've asked my teacher if I can take the final early but due to some administration rules here taking finals early has to be approved by several administrators and that usually takes a few days to process. So its quite likely that I will not be able to take the final early. This is driving me nuts!

What is it with me and writing letters...

Honestly what is it with me and writing letters. I wrote a letter to my Dad to let him know that I left the Mormon church and explained my reasons for doing so. I think it was a fair letter. Now I have not sent it. I just typed it up. Honestly I think it helped to be able to write my thoughts and opinions down. I probably will actually send this one this summer but after I get a job and get financially stable. I think this will be for the best and will allow me to be completely honest with my parents about my opinions on several subjects and religious views. Yes this is going to be rough but I do love my parents so I think it will just be best if I tell them. I've been nervous all this time since I left the Mormon Church on what will happen if I tell my parents but I think now is the time to tell them. I will just have to see what happens. I doubt my Dad or Mom will cut me out of the family though this may strain a few things.

Third Culture Kid

I am now a third culture kid. A third culture kid is someone who has spent a portion of their life growing up outside their birth or home country. I lived for a year and three months outside the U.S. And since I moved when I was 16 I was still growing up. And in a sense I am still growing up since I am still learning about new things in college. I understand more than most about Islam and Middle Eastern Politics as I lived in that particular culture. I went to school with kids from all around the world. I was and am spoiled. Vacations for me usually involved going to another country which in my case was Bahrain a wonderful Island Country which I would love to go to again and possibly live there someday.

My Fathers job included great benefits such as full health insurance in Saudi Arabia and my insurance covers half of my costs here in the U.S. so if I have anything drastic I will have to go back to Riyadh, our health insurance provided us with some of the best health care in Riyadh at Kingdom Hospital. In Saudi Arabia it is quite common for hospitals to also include pediatricians practices, dentist practices, and various other medical practices that you would not normally see in a U.S. hospital. Our healthcare practitioners were usually trained at Western Universities in the UK, Europe, Canada, and the US and Australia and New Zealand. We got the latest medical equipment and our Doctors were up to date on the latest medical procedures. As for other benefits we got to live in a wonderful house in a great compound rent free and utility free so we could turn the ac as cold as we wanted without having to worry about how we would be able to afford the electric bill. Schooling was paid for over there though they did not pay for us when we went onto College or University. My Dads salary was tax free, there were no sales taxes over there, copyright laws were not enforced there so it was not too difficult to get movies. Yes there were some drawbacks such as living under Islamic law where in public I could not wear shorts and my Mom and sisters had to wear abayas because of Islamic Modesty laws and we could not easily get pork products as that is considered a dirty animal in Islam because traditionally pigs were fed scraps and garbage and its just a thing that goes back for over a thousand years. We could occasionally get pork products from people who worked at Eskan the US military base which was a bit outside Riyadh the capital city where I lived.

Then there was the food there. They had food from all over the world there because Riyadh is actually a very international city with so many people from various different countries coming to work there they would also bring their food preferences with them so its not hard to get food from all around the world there. I am addicted to a Filipino dish called Panzit which is basically a celophane (a very thin noodle) noodle dish with chicken and nuts or whatever is put in it, schawarma which the greeks ripped off and renamed gyros and changed it a bit, great hummus, and a flat bread called arabic bread (it was round like a tortilla) which is basically a really good version of pita bread and it was great to tear off strips of it and dip it in hummus.

Then there is Arabic music. I realised this morning that I had been listening to Arabic Music all day yesterday. Although I do not speak or read Arabic or understand much of it, I still enjoy listening to it and someday I do hope to learn Arabic. Unfortunately my current college does not offer Arabic language courses and neither does Utah Valley University, which is the school I am transferring to in the fall. They do offer Japanese though so I am going to take that. There are also a lot of languages I am interested in studying so someday I hope to be multilingual. I would like to learn Arabic, Japanese, German, French, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Portuguese. This is obviously going to take me some time to learn all of these languages but imagine being able to converse with people in all of these languages. I think if I learned all these languages I would be in great demand as a interpreter in most places in the world.

As a third culture kid I do not really consider myself American anymore but rather a global nomad. I know that may seem weird as I only lived overseas for a year and three months but you would be surprised at how much you change by living overseas. I typically spell things the British way which is more common worldwide than the American way which as far as I've seen is mostly the U.S. that uses that form and occasionally Canadians will as well. I find that I identify with other nationalities such as Europeans rather than Americans these days.

Then there is my desire to travel and see new things. I have always wanted to travel for years and moving overseas to Saudi Arabia only made my travel bug worse. In fact it mushroomed as a result of living overseas. I'm sorry but I feel that many people in the US have a superiority complex because they have never lived outside the US, let alone been outside the US or North America for that fact. The US is not the greatest country in the world and people need to get their panties out of a twist about that fact!

Yes there are some downsides. For example I live in one country and my family lives in another which can make communication difficult since we live on different continents and in different time zones. International calls are expensive but fortunately there is email, letters, and skype and there are just times when you want to hear a family members voice which is where the phone and skype come into play. It is a bit rough starting college in a different country than where your family lives but it is doable. One of my biggest issues is that I never seem to have any money which I hope to remedy this summer by hopefully being able to find a job in Utah. Once I finish my college degree I will hopefully find a job overseas and move outside North America again. I don't think I could stay here for much longer anymore. Once I finish college I don't know if I could take living in the U.S. anymore. I've had a taste of life outside the U.S. and I want more!

On another note I think I would also like to go to graduate school. Where I am not sure possibly somewhere outside the US or somewhere back in the Eastern part of the US such as Virginia or Maryland. However I first need to work on getting my bachelors degree. My current goal is a degree in History. I would like to be a History teacher and teach World History. One thing I don't get about History degree is that it is mostly U.S. History Classes. That seems rather biased to me. There is so much History in the world that it seems unfair just to focus on History in the US. What about Europe, South America, The Middle East, Asia, and everywhere else in the world? I also think I need to study abroad for a semester or a year so I will need to check out what programs are available in Utah when I get there. First of all though I need money so I will need to get a job asap! I am tired of mooching off my parents and I want to be financially independent.