By Donald Gilbert ‘21
It started with a trip to New Hampshire to see her family, now Conestoga Valley senior Jenna Yingling travels the country with the hope to one day visit Tokyo, Japan.
Whether it was to see family or to go visit new parts of the country, Yingling has been travelling with her family for many years. Travelling has been a part of her life for a long time, and she has been on a countless number of trips.
“Throughout my life I’ve been on a lot of trips,” Yingling said. “A lot of times they’ve been over summer. One’s to see family usually and the other’s a trip with the four of us, my closest immediate family, so I couldn’t really count them all, but I’d say an average of two every year.”
When going on a trip, Yingling and her family have an idea of what they plan to do.
“If we’re just going on a vacation, the four of us, not necessarily to see family but just go somewhere, my family usually prefers to go to an amusement park or a city,” Yingling said. “We’ll usually, if we’re going to the city, we’ll usually go explore the city. We’ll try some of the restaurants they have, if they have a specialty for some kind of food there, we’ll definitely go and check that out.”
After travelling for all these years, Yingling figured out why she liked it so much.
“It’s just interesting to experience the new places,” Yingling said. “Most of the places I’ve travelled to are within the country, just to see how different our own country is, different aspects of our own country. San Francisco is a different city than any other one I’ve been to. The fact that the east and west coast and the north and south are so different geographically, culturally. I think it’s important to go learn about the different cultures within our own country.”
During her travels, Yingling has found aspects that she does not enjoy, mostly involving the place she is traveling to.
” I’m not a super outdoorsy person so it was nice to see the waterfalls, but it wasn’t necessarily my favorite,” Yingling said about traveling to Ithaca, New York.
“We went to South Carolina and it was nice there, but we did a lot of walking around and it was kind of hot,” Yingling explained about her trip.
When traveling, Yingling, and her family, have their preferences.
“I definitely prefer an urban environment; I do like the beach, but our family has come to realize we’re not really a beach family,” Yingling said about her preference. “I think it’s really cool to be in that nice, bustling city environment.”
In terms of future travels, Yingling has a couple ideas.
“I’m more familiar inside the U.S., but I would love to travel to other countries, I think that would be really interesting to do,” Yingling stated.
Despite the many trips she has went on, there is one place she would like to visit.
“I feel like I would like to go to Tokyo, Japan just because I hear it’s very different from here, but it still has that urban environment that I like,” Yingling said.