This is week 3 for the Final Project. I’d like to explore a new travel bog named “Get in The Hot Spot“. This travel blog is written by an Australian Travel Blogger Annabel Candy. She designed this hot spot for women who are in midlife, sharing her travel experiences and life stories.

I liked her blog because I am the exactly her aiming audience, who is in the midlife and love to travel. I know being a midlife working mom, it was so hard to go somewhere and have adventurous. I tried my best to travel at least one to two time every year with my family. This way I could enjoy on the road with my family, and I could give my children a chance to see different places. I remembered I talked to one of my co-workers a few years ago. I was planning a trip to Florida. I shared my plans with her, and I was shocked when she told me she had never been out of Minnesota in her life. She was 20 years old at that time. She told me her parents were farmers and they didn’t have the money and time to take her to travel when she was young. I felt so sorry for her because she didn’t have a chance to travel. So, I decided I would take my children to a new place each year to show them how beautiful the world is.

When I opened her blog home page, I was falling in love with her settings. This was one of the best blog settings I had ever seen! There was a short introduction for each post and a photo on the side. I thought this was an easy way to catch reader’s eyeballs, at least I was the one who had been attracted. On the top of the page, there was a “Start Here” page right on the side of the “Home” page. When I clicked in, the title of this page was “Start Here to Read What’s HOT“. This page divided her posts into different categories. I found this interested post “5 Reasons Travel Gets Better as You Get Older“. In this post, she showed us 5 reasons that aging may get travel better than you were young, such as “a more relaxed attitude creates a more relaxed experience, less hassle, less scam, no need to party and Confidence to do your own thing”. I agreed with her points, especially the one “less hassle”. When you were young and alone, it was easy to get attention from a man.  I had an experience a long time ago when I was in Long Island, New York. I went to grocery shopping by myself. I pushed a shopping cart in the store, and a guy was following me the entire time until I paid my groceries and walked out of the store. He stopped me in the parking lot and asked me if I would like to be his girlfriend. But now I am getting older, I don’t have this problem anymore. I guess this is one good thing for being older.

There was another feature of Candy’s blog that I really liked. It was the page named “Destinations”. When I moved my mouse sign to the “Destinations”, there was a drop down window pop out. I moved down to “Asian”, and I found “China”. I wanted to read her experience with China, so I clicked in. There was only one post “The Western Blogger and the Eastern Blogger” in this page. I opened this post, it was a letter that Candy wrote to her Chinese Blogger friend. I read her letter, and I had some dissident thoughts with her. She mentioned in her letter,

“It seemed as if laughing was forbidden. I wonder if that’s why Chinese people seem so quiet compared to Westerners – because you’re not allowed to show your emotions and if you do you can be punished?”

I didn’t know what her friend told her about China. But I’d like to tell her that laughing wasn’t forbidden in China. You could laugh at any time you wanted, and you would not get punished because you were laughing in the public. She also talked about her friend couldn’t write his thoughts on his blog when he was in China. Well,  I had a blog in China before, and I have friends who are bloggers too. We could write our life experiences, share our life stories, travel tips and cooking recipes freely. I never had any problem with my blog. I hope this may help Candy to know more about Chinese Bloggers.

Finally, I still want to say “Thank you!” to Candy for her excellent blog. I think I learned some new tips from you. Way to go!