I asked people to share with me their travel tips (I should have asked BEFORE I left, instead of a week in, but so it is.) and folks came up with some really good ones. If you have any more, please share. I will include people’s tips at the end of this post, but first want to tell you why learning Chinese is the best tip…ever. 
Actually, just learning other languages is very very helpful and I would highly recommend it. I speak fluently English and Chinese and can get by in Spanish. Thus far on the trip, I’ve been able to use all of them and it has made the trip so much more fantastic.
So I was in Paris from Friday until Tuesday morning. During this time, Kurt and Esther were extremely extremely gracious, hospitable, and generous. They showed me around, let me stay with them, eat with them, basically be a part of their lives. I am very thankful for the soft start that I had because of them. On Sunday I went to church at Notre Dame (all by myself!) and to this beautyfull chapel nearby. Then on Monday, I had the chance to wander around by myself all day. It took me a few hours to work up the bravery to go outside and face the scary world of French people. Really, they are not scary at all, but I was just afraid of trying to get on with the few words of French I knew and was basically afraid of making mistakes. Finally (with the help of friends such as Aaron and Mary), got up the guts to go outside. Of course it was fine. I gave myself two tasks:
1. Go to la poste (the post office) and get stamps and 2. find my way back to the Louve and go to a musuem.
There were a few stops on the metro that would have gotten me to where I needed to go, but I decided to walk instead. There is this one street that leads directly from their home to the center of the tourist area. So I’m walking and feeling a bit nervous about my direction and everything (in general) and then I see a resturant with Chinese writing on it. Kurt had told me that there is an area where there are a lot of Chinese immigrants and so I went in to ask for directions. Thank God (and my parents) that I speak Chinese! The woman was really nice. She had been in Paris for a few years and she flagged down her little sister for me to ask her to take me to the post office. Her sister look like an early teen and was too cool to take me, but told me how to say stamps and the woman from the resturant gave me directions. Along the waay I would stop random people that I hoped were Chinese and ask them for directions. If I asked if someone spoke Chinese, the person would not respond (lots of poeple asking for money use this is a way to ask for money), but if I asked where the post office was, they would point me. I got to the post office!! 
Ah the little joys in life.
After that I became a bit more brave and eventually met another person from the U.S. (a guy from Oakland, CA). I hopefully talked him into using restorative justice and peace making circles in fourth classroom.
Later on, I met a woman from Portugal and she spoke Portuguese, French, and a bit of Spanish. So Spanish has been very good to me as well.
Moral of the story…learn another language!!
now, the REAL travel tips (sorry about emilio’s being huge, this is a swiss-french keyboard and i’m still not really sure how it works):
money, tickets, passport. repeat every time you move. 
-Meaghan
traveling is learning.
not just moving around.
meet local people, learn local language & culture. -Teppei
i like to say that i don’t travel alone… i travel with people i haven’t yet met. my big tip is to head off solo and see who you meet. – liz
“ A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. ”— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (from Emilio)
try to do something where you have no idea what’s going on. – Denny
have no plan. -Ryan
face wipes.-Liz
a little tp in your backpack and take care of your feet.-Shelly
Don’t be afraid to get lost. -rosanna
Pack light and then pack again lighter, you never need half the stuff you bring. Oh yea water proof stuff sacs are great and one is always useful.-justin
and peanut butter. a little jar might save you a world of hurt.-shelly
Ditto on venturing off alone. Forces you to communicate with local people, and they are more likely to approach you, too.-sonya
—-
I am currently in Caux Switzerland. Will write more later on the monastery and then on Switzerland.
May all be well with you.
