I agree with most of what nothingless wrote and I have to add my own experience with people: Sometimes, people who have to travel much because of their work know better what travel can give you and what not. On the opposite, I know many folks, mostly educated, academic people, who, far away from being just "tourists", have/find/demand enough time to travel every now and then to some place just for leisure/relaxing/meeting people/sightseeing. People who claim to "have friends everywhere", "have seen so many things", "gather experiences" etc etc - many (if not most) of them don't get absolutely NOTHING in terms of what I would call life experience or let's say maturity. They got some practical skills associated with travelling, but their knowledge on how the world works gradually reached a plateau. The reason is obvious: when you think the world is just a party, seeing 1000 instead of 100 places and talking to 1000 instead of 100 people does not make any difference and will not change your opinion on basic things - in reality, this "party-world" view makes you resistant to learning. Some of the most common things many of my friends "learn" through their "contact with other cultures, soooo different from ours" is to believe in various new age mythologies of oriental/tribal/ancient or whatever origin (for me, as a scientist, it's a tragedy, having to listen on how they fixed "the disequilibrium of the sixth chakra" and stories like this). Would you, melvaughn, call these people intelligent or interesting -just because of those travels?? (well, if you ask me, they still are, but for other reasons) I used to be a little bit jealous, working in my lab while my friends met "so many interesting people from all other the world" and got from them "an open invitation to visit XXXX who lives in YYYYY where the ZZZZ event will be - will you join us, Hanf?" and so on. As the years pass by, more and more of them admit feeling jealous of me... However, to get back to topic, Adriana's statement does not suggest to me that she is not intelligent or interesting...
