![\"England\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/england.jpg\")
![\"Denmark\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/denmark-cph.jpg\")
![\"Sweden\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/sweden.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve spent the last month traveling through Europe, specifically England, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Belgium. Articles continued to appear, twice per week, because I published them before I left. However, this is actually my first time sitting down to write in over a month.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t go into too much detail of my trip. I leave the extensive travel writing to more talented hands. But I will share a few thoughts arising from my recent adventures.<\/p>\n
I was amazed, as in a Norwegian store, the sales clerk switched between chatting in Norwegian to the other workers, flawless English and again over to Spanish with another customer. Or when our tour of Copenhagen in three languages wasn\u2019t a recording, but one person repeating the information three times in Danish, English and then German.<\/p>\n
North America is largely monolingual. Even living in Canada, an officially bilingual country, I\u2019ve only recently started to seriously learn French. When not just a few linguistic geniuses, but almost an entire population are fluent in 2, 3 or 4 languages, it shows that second-language acquisition can\u2019t be a talent for just a select few.<\/p>\n
I visited plenty of tourist spots along my trip: Big Ben, The Little Mermaid, Manneken Pis and Oslo\u2019s crying baby. But considering the cost of traveling, I found this aspect of my trip underwhelming. I\u2019m not the kind of person with a checklist, hoping to cross off life experiences like a to-do list.<\/p>\n
The best experiences were staying with English relatives in Whitstable, my sister\u2019s former host family in Denmark or with a Belgian family who spoke little English and rapid-fire French. I think in traveling, like in life, it\u2019s the things that never make it to a checklist that you enjoy most.<\/p>\n
For the first time since I started this website, I took an entire month without doing (almost) any work. I didn\u2019t open a document to write once. I didn\u2019t work, examine or expand any projects. Aside from moderating a few comments and paying a bill or two, I didn\u2019t do any work towards this website.<\/p>\n
Taking the time off was great, especially with a busy travel schedule. It was nice not to have to worry about leaving the blog empty since I knew a month\u2019s worth of content was coming down the pipeline.<\/p>\n
However, I missed working by the end of the trip. I\u2019ve realized I enjoy life most when it involves waking up early to write and work through the day on personal projects. Now that I\u2019m back from my vacation I can regain my energy by doing some work.<\/p>\n
One element of my trip that disappointed me was being unable to meet up with more people through this website on my travels. I had several requests to meet up, but it was impossible with my schedule.<\/p>\n
I felt the trip was overplanned, as well. Most of this was due to coordinating with family while visiting my sister in Denmark. However, in future travels I think a more spontaneous route might be more freeing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve spent the last month traveling through Europe, specifically England, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Belgium. Articles continued to appear, twice per week, because I published them before I left. However, this is actually my first time sitting down to write in over a month. I won\u2019t go into too much detail of my trip. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[683,660],"tags":[425,665,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-nc-career","7":"category-language-learning","8":"tag-europe","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-travel","11":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n