GEA 3635 Travel Guide
Instructions
DUE: Friday, April 4, 2013, at the start of
class (both the printed version to Prof. Smith and the digital version to
turnitin.com)
The point of this assignment is threefold. One is to make you appreciate the
To that end, you will be assigned the task of creating a travel guide/itinerary for an approximately one week trip (including 6 days on the ground in your destination) for you and one other person from MIA/FLL to a destination in the Middle East. That destination will be assigned to you randomly by the professor. I will expect that the written text (not including pictures) will be no less than seven pages, double spaced, 12 point font (Times New Roman or Garamond only), with one inch margins.
What does this have
to do with Geography?
Many of us who pursue geography degrees are endlessly fascinated by the world, and want to understand why it is how it is (and for most of us, we also want to know how to make the world better). Sometimes the semester papers I have received for this class have been too general and not in touch with what the region is like on the ground; in other words, the papers lacked those key geographic ingredients – attention to scale and attention to materiality. Having to write a travel guide that reads as both usable and interesting will make you pay attention to those more everyday, concrete parts of life in the region. And hopefully, it will be more fun than a term paper too.
That being said, when writing the guide, remain sensitive to the themes of the course – connections between places and ideas inside and outside of the region, and the existence of very real diversity within the region.
SPECIAL NOTE: Some of
you will be assigned places that are impossible (because of visa restrictions)
or unwise (because of militias or on going
military/police action) to travel to right now. You just have to pretend and do the travel
guide as if the restrictions are not in place.
The following places, as of mid-February, fit in this category: Libya,
Syria, and Yemen.
Sections to Include
A. Getting there. This includes:
1) The airline name, flight time, cost and routing (ie, what connections you have to make) of a roundtrip, coach airfare. You can go from either MIA or FLL. Shop for the best deal with a reasonable travel time. You will lose points if you settle for a ridiculous flight that takes you 2+ days to get there. Hint – when you search for a flight, pick one at least one month from the date your search. Prices will be better.
2) Costs/procedures for getting an entry visa. You must figure this out for the country from which you hold a passport. For some destinations, this may be trickier and possibly impossible (hint – sometimes it helps to have pretend friends in the country).
--- NOTE: Even if you cannot get in your country easily, you still have to make the itinerary anyway.
3) Health, safety, and fitting in concerns: Are there any particular health or safety risks in all/parts of your destination. Also what should visitors wear so as to not offend the local population.
B. Description of Destination’s Context: Like any good traveler, it is important to know something about the place you are going. Here you need to include:
1. Climate: Describe what the weather will be like in each season. If you have a country (as opposed to a city), also describe what is happening in different areas of the country (eg mountains vs. coasts vs. interior). You should be able to do this in one long paragraph.
2. Historical Geography: Who all has lived there over the centuries? What was life like in the past? How did colonialism impact the destination? How did the country/city as we know it today come about? How did becoming independent change the country and the day to day life of its inhabitants? Have there been any major events since independence that changed the daily situation? This subsection should be at least 1 page.
3. Population: How much has your country/city grown since the beginning of the 1900’s? What is the total population today? This should be a short paragraph.
4. Life today: What religion(s) and language(s) do people in your destination follow? What is the economy based on/what do people do for work? What is the current political situation like? Recent developments (new skyscrapers? Hotels? Museums? Public Buildings? Stadiums?, etc?) What is the social context (what is the divide between rich/poor, men/women (remember this can vary tremendously even in the same city), urban/rural? Are there minority groups and how do they fare?) What is an average day like for a citizen of your destination? This is a two page section on its own.
C. The Itinerary
Assume you are taking off from South Florida and landing back here 7 or 8 days later. You must have at least 5 full days on the ground in the destination. Explain in detail what you will be doing each day. For each day (as long you are not flying), be sure to include:
1. Hotel. Pick a nice hotel that is sort of mid price-range for your destination. Please describe some of the distinguishing features of the hotel (good location, nice amenities, in a historic structure) that make it attractive to stay in.
2. Transport. How will you get around? (Taxi, subway, rental car, bus?) How nice will that mode be? What will be the cost? Will there be issues with traffic, checkpoints or road conditions? If you are traveling across country is road or internal flight a better option?
3. Eating. I want you to be as specific as possible by naming individual restaurants (or your hotel if you get free breakfast) and what you might eat there. If your destination doesn’t lend itself well to finding individual restaurant names, at least tell me dishes that you are likely to eat while in your destination. Tell me how much the meal will cost.
4. Activities. Consider each day as having three blocks (morning, afternoon, evening). Describe what you will do in each of those blocks each day. Be specific about what you are doing and where you are doing it, make it seem appealing, and try not to repeat yourself (ie, do not find an all inclusive resort and spend everyday sitting on the beach – one day is fine, but the whole week is excessive). If you end up shopping, tell me what you are shopping for. Remember, a good mix of sites includes (amongst other things) sites of historical importance, sites that demonstrate everyday life, and those of great architectural/natural interest.
D. Total Costs
Give me a breakdown of total costs by category (remember, you are making the itinerary for two) and then add it all up to give me a final total cost. The categories are include:
E. Bibliography
Pick a recognized,
consistent citation style. At the very
least, every entry needs author, year, title of article (if not a book), title
of publication it is in, page number/url (if not a
book), and issue number/date (if not a book).
Other Issues
COUNTRY vs. CITY
As some of you will notice, some destinations include
“Greater Cairo” or “
FORMATTING
How you format this is up to you. You can write it like a travel article from the New York Times, keeping it mostly narrative or (probably easier) you can do it in an outline using the same labels I used above. Either way you must write in complete sentences AND include all of the above information.
However, please include a cover page with your name, Panther ID, destination, and date of submission at the front.
PICTURES
Include them – they help to make what you write come alive. In the caption, be sure to tell me what the photo is of, and the source for the photo.
MAP
Include a map of your destination, with the places you are going/staying highlighted.
SOURCES
You must use at least 8 sources for your travel guide, preferably more. At least one must be a book about your destination, which is not a travel guide and not a text book – YOU WILL LOSE POINTS WITHOUT IT. At least one must be an academic journal article (ie – an article with a full bibliography attached). Two must be from newspapers or magazines – or their associated websites (travel section is OK). Beyond that, websites like the official government tourism portals for your destination, lonelyplanet.com (as well as Lonely Planet Guide books which should be available from public libraries), and tripadvisor.com should help you think of where to go. Wikipedia does not count – you may look at it to start to get a general idea, but anything you find there you must track down another reputable source that says the same thing (which is easy, because Wikipedia has citations).
PLAGARISM & TURNITIN.COM
The travel guide must be written in your own words, not cut and pasted from various sources. You will be submitting to turnitin.com – if you plagiarize (which includes improperly citing direct quotations, using too large of a % of one source, or having too much of your paper not in your own words (even if properly cited), you receive a 0 on the assignment AND lose all your attendance participation points. Instructions on submitting will be made available soon.
It is always a good idea to sign up for the class on turnitin.com well before the deadline, in case their servers are having difficulty around submission time.
GRADING
What I am looking for in these travel guides?
1. Is the trip as described interesting? This is key – if you do not put any effort into your research, you will come up with a trip that is uninteresting. This does not mean you need to go skydiving or something like that. What it does mean is that you look for interesting sites, restaurants and hotels to visit; that you use your context section to make your place come alive and then make an itinerary that includes sites important to the context you described; that you visit a diversity of sites in a range of places within your destination.
2. Does the travel guide make the trip seem
doable? If someone unfamiliar with
the region picked up this travel guide and hopped on a plane, would they have a
chance of having a successful vacation?
Guides that are specific in how to get around
and what to do will get higher grades than guides which are much more general.
3 Is
it well written/organized? Is the
document more or less free from typos?
Does it flow nicely and have a logical structure? All of this is important as well.
4. Is it well informed? Guides that show good research with lots of
specific information will do well; someone who just imagines what their
destination is like based on what they think they might of heard about the
region will do poorly. If nothing
else, this class is teaching you the