What's better than blogging around the world?

May 18, 2007 2:54 PM

The GF and I are traveling around in Europe, Kenya and Latin America starting late June and ending up living somewhere in Latin America in 2008. What kind of project can we do that will capture, encompass and enhance our trip?

Obviously, we're going to keep a blog. I have yet to set it up, but I'll put it in my profile when I do. In addition to that, what sort of activity could we do in all these various places to be creative and give ourselves mini-missions to accomplish?

We have some skills in the area of writing, drawing, photography, and, to a much lesser degree, music.

One, not tremendous, idea would be taking a certain photo in every different country, of the national library, of ourselves doing handstands, of an item belonging to a friend, e.g.

Also we've been involved for almost three years now with the field of microcredit. So, another idea might be visiting the clients of microfinance institutions. However, that might be hard or 'not applicable' in France, England and Spain.

Bonus points to ideas that are:
original
creative (i.e. the end result is a physical or virtual artifact)
cheap.

Our specific itinerary is England, France, Spain ( Camino de Santiago), Portugal, [back to London] Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, and then points beyond, in Lat. Am., starting Jan. 2008.

Many thanks.

posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal to travel & transportation (8 comments total)

There is a great "Where is Matt" video that shows him dancing a cute, funny dance in unique, picturesque locations all over the world. Obviously, this would earn no points for creativity or originality, though.

Since you have a history of drawing and writing, and you are already going to blog, I'm thinking you might want to incorporate the drawing into this.

So, just how good ARE you at drawing? For example, could you draw a place with yourselves in the drawing, put the camera on the drawing, and then fade from the drawing with the two of you in it into the real place with you two standing there? Not sure if those are the terms I want, but I think you get what I am saying. Bonus points for then creating some music on garage band or similar to go with the presentation.
posted by misha at 3:12 PM on May 18, 2007

Have guest blog entries written by people who live in the countries you visit.
posted by designbot at 3:12 PM on May 18, 2007

Perhaps you could take up a hobby that you can practice in different ways in all of these countries? For instance, cooking, or wine appreciation.

Wine in particular would be good in most of those countries. When you're done, you've got a well-rounded and experienced palate and not a few favorite bottles.
posted by gurple at 4:04 PM on May 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

I say you take, like, 8000 photos, and make little photo books along the way to be mailed to Grandma. Nothing huge or fancy - maybe a flip book or something small that she can pull out of her purse and show the other ladies at taekwondo or whatever. Something like this? (I've never used them, but it looks cool and pretty cheap.)

You could do one family member/friend per country: keep them updated with letters, postcards, packages, and the photo books, and let them show off your cool stuff at gatherings - everyone will have to talk to each other to piece together the story of your trip, and the people you send stuff to will have their own narratives, too ("I couldn't think of anything to use for my X project at school, but then I got HE's package in the mail, and I decided to write about something I saw in one of his/her photos!").

Maybe you could even have His Excellency meetups, where family and friends meet up at one location and video chat with you guys at a preset time, wherever you are?
posted by mdonley at 4:05 PM on May 18, 2007

we did sketchbooks while we were travelling, one page per day about whatever we were seeing, thinking about, or felt like drawing. they turned out pretty cool and definitely provide an interesting counterpoint to tourist snapshots. plus we each had one, so we can compare our daily pages for any given day.
posted by lgyre at 9:09 PM on May 18, 2007

My fellow and I compulsively collected "souveniers" when we spend two weeks in northern Europe - paper menus, food wrappers, postcards, ticket stubs from museums and concerts, really anything that has some little physical piece of what we were experiencing that could be laid flat. It all ended up in a paper bag in my backpack labeled "NOT TRASH" and which is currently sitting on my desk awaiting integration into a large journal.

Every night when we were "done" for the day, we took a few minutes to jot down notes on paper and impressions from where we had gone and what we had done that day. We're working on fleshing these out to real entries on each day before we forget too much. We also took LOTS of photographs with a very nice digital camera - which is a mixed blessing. Now we need to put some money into getting them printed for the journal and for our wall, whereas a cheapo camera would have given us basic prints weeks ago. This is part of why our journal isn't fully assembled yet.

But - the goal is to have a physical Trip Journal / Scrapbook whose spine we'll label with the destination and time of our trip, and will eventually go on the shelf among other trip journals. Everything in it we produced ourselves, or are bits of debris we decided not to throw away and hence were acquired for free (well, one is a paper Euro bill, but you get the point). It'll be a multi media memento of our trip that other people can enjoy, and will be a great way to remember what we did, what we ate, what we saw - the only thing missing would be a sound aspect. I leave that to you!

Have a great trip!!
posted by nelleish at 7:17 AM on May 19, 2007

i found that just the act of combining words with photographs in a truly meaningful blog (that I'm now turning into a hardcover book) actually took lots of creativity in itself. rather than doing the "we went here, we ate this, the weather was thusly", to try to really capture snapshots and experiences in words, or to take unique photos that really get at the essence of a place is really gratifying.

in any case, have a fabulous adventure!
posted by wayward vagabond at 8:58 AM on May 19, 2007

Record the sounds of everyday life wherever you go and build a sound library.

I wish I had done more of this in the past as I have a rather bad memory. When I'm trying to invoke memories of places I've been to and faces I miss, the few sound recordings I do have (not many) help me to remember those times.

Also, I imagine that when I finally manage to get a job now that I'm back in the UK, it would be flippin' great to listen to the ambient sounds of other far flung journeys during the daily commute.

Could just be me though....
posted by davehat at 12:45 PM on May 19, 2007