Hey guys!

Just wanted to fill you in on what’s buzzing with the bugs! Our plans have changed and we are no longer traveling together to Africa this summer as the World Travel Bugs. However, the Butterfly, Bee, and Firefly (Shelley, Sierra, and Tyler) have further to fly and will be going their own separate ways this summer.

We will be sure to let you know about our upcoming adventures as they unfold!

Sierra will be Commercial Fishing in the high seas of Alaska. You can follow her epic journey at The Real Alaska.

Shelley is currently working in South Africa for the summer as a teacher for a local village school. Stay tuned for updates! Check out her most recent journey through the Promised Land, Israel, at The World Travel Bugs

See what Tyler is up to at TyWilliamsPhotography.com and for some incredible and inspiring photography.

Thanks for checking in. We look forward to hearing from you!!!

Shelley, Sierra,  Tyler and Cody

shelley.smsmith@gmail.com

sierraganderson@gmail.com

tywwilliams@gmail.com

In the meantime we hope you…

Sit back

Relax

Grab a beverage (or two)

Maybe pop some popcorn

Keep this site on your home page

RELIVE the adventures

And get some ideas for YOUR own future TRAVEL EXPERIENCE!

The backpack; Our identitiy, our resúmé, our personality. All spelled out in an object. With it, we are a community, one people. We’re travelers who leave our homes, our country, our comfort to go, to do. To get lost, to make mistakes, to seek adventure, the unknown.
We are backpackers.

We are not afraid. We are open to experience, to the new to the different. We are learners, we are leaders, or seek to become them. We thrive from conversation about our differences our similarities our hopes our dreams; dreams for ourselves, for our countries, for the world. We are do-ers and dreamers.
We are backpackers.

We are restless in the quest to see more to learn more to be more than we are. Seldom do we know where we’re going, what to expect when we get there. But we do expect one thing; the unexpected. We expect to be uncomfortable and unfamiliar with where we are. But somehow that sense of unfamiliarity, that feeling of out of place…it’s right. It’s where we’re supposed to be.

We seek each other out. Seek out each other’s advice, comfort, encouragement, friendship. We want to help each other, to share stories and experiences, to grow from one another. There are moments when you are lower than you ever thought you could be; you’re physically and mentally finished and feel your exhaustion and frustration taking you over, swallowing you up. In these moments, you see a backpack, anywhere, and you clamor to connect. He or she becomes your source for revitilization, for emotional nourishment, for direction. Your lifeline.

Hostels become a refuge, your battery charger, the closest thing to family and familiarity. They’re filled with pockets of people doing the same thing you are. Many solo, many in small groups eager to meet each other, share remarkable travel tales and contacts in whatever places they’ve been, offer ideas of how to take your journey farther, deeper.

We may not look anything alike, speak a different language, come from opposite ends of world. But because of the backpack, you know each other already. You know you’re made of the same stuff.

It’s like picking up on a former conversation, little introduction required.

Home no longer becomes a place but people. On a train, at the bus station, at a hostel, or roaming the streets of a foreign city. The backpack is home. We’re home in each other, wherever we are.

As we had a 9 hour wait until our ferry to Santorini, Sierra and I decided to kill time and poke our heads into a few shops. Little did we know that not once, but perhaps 10 times were we going to re-live Julia Roberts crippling encounter as modern-day Cinderellas pre-prince Charming.

Time after time, employees glared at Sierra and I in the eye with such unashamed vile distaste, towards the end of our shopping excursion we couldn’t help but laugh right out loud at this ridiculousness. That is, when we weren’t looking at each other utterly crushed, confused, hurt.

Even without our backpacks were we that disheveled? Do we look untrustworthy? Like tourists? Poor? Ugly?

It was truly amazing. I would say in roughly 97 percent of the stores Si and I entered, we received the same reaction. No smiles, no no wave, certainly no help, plus a following look of disgust, sometimes laughter and whispers as we perused the isles.

Even young local girls our age responding to a smile from Sierra or I would give us the once over, turn to their girlfriends and laugh.

At one point when Sierra happily and with a big smile held up an outfit explaining to an attendent she wished to purchase it, the woman aggressively and very angerily barked something at her we couldn’t understand before allowing her to pay for the item then roughly shooing us out the door.

Who knows if it was because of how we were dressed or just who we were, travelers, that we received such awful visual and verbal responses from employees, one thing was certain: our attitudes, manners and demeanor had nothing to do with it.

This was the hardest thing to grasp.

The harder they pushed us, the meaner they treated us, store by store Si and I were committed to pushing them back with all of the kindness and courtesy we could muster, including speaking Greek, including asking how they were doing.

This really was the first time I felt like nothing I did or how hard I tried to be kind made any iota of difference. It was really the first time I felt absolutely humiliated. And over and over and over and over without break.

And all because of my appearance.

To experience the feeling of being looked at like you’re dirt, you’re unwanted, and nothing you say or do matters, was eye-opening to how some may feel every day because of their skin color, sexual orientation, or whatever the case may be. To encounter people who already have fixed opinions about who you are is a tough wall to break down.

Although we clearly received no immediate results from our loving responses to the grinches in Piraues, who are we to know if in small measure our refusal to spit fire back at them, maybe their hearts were softened in some way.

Si and I found comfort in the fact that we knew who we were even if these people didn’t and clearly didn’t care to. In times like these we were forced to realize that the only way to deal with such undeserved hurt is to hold onto the truth that we don’t and never will have control over other people’s action, only our own.

And if you can be at peace with your behavior sometimes that’s the only peace you will find.
But that peace is enough.