Before I made up my mind whether I am a tourist or a traveler, I looked up the words in dictionary and asked whether friends at works and friends outside of work think of me as a tourist or a traveler. According to my dictionary, tourist is "a person who is traveling or visiting a place for pleasure" and traveler is "a person who is traveling or who often travels". It seems to me that traveler is a broader term that includes tourist, which means, travelers travel not only for pleasure but also for other purposes such as religion, work...ect. Well, if that's the case, I am a traveler. When I asked people I know in Dublin this question, it at first occurred to them I was kidding them. After thinking about the different connotation behind tourist and traveler, most of people I asked said I was a traveler. And that really pleased me...yes. I think my 10 week experience is quite different from one week of intensive traveling around Ireland. It is the lab work experience, the local people I work with, and the local people I hang out with and listen to their stories. It is a small apartment that I call home for 10 weeks, and a near by supermarket that I go for food. It is an art gallery that I spent hours getting lost in it, and a small cafe that I enjoyed 2 latte for 3 hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon. It is the public transit and streets that I get to know, and even show some tourists how to get around (for this, I am quite proud of myself since I'm normally not that bright at direction). I even got a Dublin Public Library card. There are lots of things that a tourist miss out and I get a chance to experience. And for all these, I'm glad to say I am a traveler. But like I said earlier, traveler is a broader term that includes tourist, so no matter what I am, I try to be a good one.
As a traveler, I obviously enjoy traveling, and my definition of traveling is living in a country for at least a few months to a few years. And I plan to do nothing but just that.
Ireland is a beautiful country, but I have to say Canada is no less beautiful. It's also a small country that driving from east coast to west coast takes only 3 hours. This really makes traveling around so much easy and simple. I took a few trips, one to the southern Ireland - the city of Cork, and one to western Ireland - the city of Galway. The cities are quite small and everything is in a walking distance. Another great thing is that I travel with a couple of other interns from other countries, which makes the experience much more fun and memorable. Enjoy some of my pictures.
