Salida High School’s newest social studies teacher, Brady Hines, has had an extensive history traveling the world. From South America to South Korea, Hines has made it a point to travel, both for work and personal growth. He taught abroad in Prague, Czech Republic and South Korea, and he took extensive personal trips to South America and Central America.
When Hines decided to teach abroad, he went to the Czech Republic and taught there for nine months. He worked in Yellowstone National Park a couple of summers during college, and his roommate there was from Czechia. One Christmas break he decided to visit Prague, and he thought it was an amazing place, so decided to teach English there. Then, he learned that South Korea was a good place for teaching English abroad because they paid for things like flights and housing, so he taught there. He went there three separate times, once for three months, once for nine months, and once for 14 months. Hines would highly suggest traveling somewhere for an extended period of time to truly experience the culture of a place.
“You’ll really get to see the culture a lot more, and doing something like working or volunteering, that’s gonna be your in to form connections with real people from there. You won’t be an outsider looking into their culture, you’ll get a genuine view of it,” Hines said.
He’s also done a lot of personal traveling, including a trip with two friends to South America. In South America, he went to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and Chile, and he was excited to experience the rivers and natural beauty of the continent. Among the stand out experiences for Hines there was visiting the scenic Patagonia; rafting the Futaleufú River in Chile; a hiking trip in the Cloud Forests in Machu Picchu, Peru; and rafting several rivers in Ecuador, including a first descent after hiking for two hours in the jungle.
“We met up with this rafting company there–they were a really small rafting company–and there was this section of the river they really wanted to do but didn’t have enough people to do it safely, and they led the whole way. We didn’t know where we were going, and we saw some indigenous folks living their more traditional lifestyles out there,” Hines said.
While Hines went on his South America trip with friends, he did his trip to Central America solo. He felt like this was a very freeing experience, and he would recommend others to travel solo. While traveling, he found the people he encountered very nice.
“One person who picked me up invited me to have lunch at this house. The people were so welcoming and kind. I could go out and do whatever I wanted, and things were cheap, and I got to meet a lot of really cool people,” he said.
Traveling has also helped shape Hines’ personal life. While on his solo Central America trip, he met his now wife of 11 years in Honduras when she was also traveling solo. Later, he proposed to his wife at Ha Long Bay in Vietnam during a memorable trip to South East Asia.
“Spending a day at this place called Kuang Si in Laos, it’s sort of like a flooded forest in places with these mineral pools. There’s these waterfalls, and you’re walking through the forest and trees are growing right out of the pools. We rented a little motorcycle and drove to these towns, that’s something that sticks out to me. I was with my wife, it was right before I proposed to her,” Hines said.
Hines has learned a lot from his travels. From traveling to more developing countries, he’s learned that a lot of the material possessions people tend to fret over are not that important, saying that “[it] makes you question our priorities. It makes you question whether a more simplistic life could be less stressful in some ways.” He greatly encourages young people to travel solo because he feels that there are numerous benefits. He recommends that people traveling alone should do their research, but they shouldn’t overthink their trips because it can be easy to talk yourself out of going.
“When you go somewhere by yourself, especially at a relatively young age, I feel like that’s very empowering. You’re gonna encounter problems, and you won’t be able to call you momma, you’ll have to rely on you. After going through challenges like that, when you come home, you’ll feel like you can overcome any of the challenges you have,” Hines said.