Chandler Massey Quotes

When I was 12, we began hosting exchange students from Norway, Sweden, Japan and Spain. I soon realized there was a whole world out there. I was determined to spend my sophomore year in high school abroad. My school taught only Spanish, but I wanted to go to France, and I did.

It is fantastic to be found in a foreign country.

After college, I wanted to learned about myself as an American, so I left the United States and went to Japan.

I'd never left America until I was 18.

I've been influenced by my travels across India and the globe.

Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia.

I'd never really travelled before, and when we started going places, like Japan, France, Germany and all over Europe, it's been interesting to see how different cultures work. But to be there playing music makes it so much better.

I think that one of the main privileges of what I do, which I am just starting to learn, is to have the ability to travel all over the world and experience different cultures.

I'm dying to go to India... because the culture seems so vastly different from what I'm used to in the States. I would love to do some yoga there. And be amongst people who are so different than myself. There's so much you can learn from people who grew up in a different environment.

When I left the U.S. for the first time, I spent my first year abroad in Japan. That culture shock and abundance of new stimuli combined with a lack of guidance forced me to develop my own approaches to learning and juggling.

After I finished high school I went to Hong Kong and Thailand and spent some time there. Just to get that whole experience of being out of the bubble that I was in from high school in Vancouver, to be able to travel around and be on your own was an amazing experience.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.

I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels.

And then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to China in 1980, which was quite early.

I grew up in Harlem in New York, very rough, urban environment, and so what I found is that, if I can have kids travel to different places, countries, areas, it can expand their minds.

I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible.

I haven't travelled that much before so this is the first time I get to see the big cities of Europe. I've never even been to US.

When I was 17, I went to India for six weeks and had what, at the time, was a very challenging trip. You walk down the street and you see lepers and beggars, and there were several of us, a group of Americans. I remember we were just trying to park one night somewhere and people were just sleeping in the parking lot.

Traveling to Russia and Germany and being able to see the world at a young age was really cool for me, and I really liked that.

I went to high schools in four different countries. The gift is that you can constantly reinvent yourself. I still feel that freedom. One day, I'll wear a dress I got in India; the next, Converse sneakers and jeans.

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to visit another culture.

I was very lucky when I was a kid - I travelled a lot and spent a lot of time in Africa, Asia and Europe. I also chant in Sanskrit.

When you go out of your country and meet people, you get a wider perspective.

You never really know what's inspired you or made you who you are, but I was really lucky that I got to grow up in places like Japan and Hong Kong that are super energetic and have this intensity to them.