We got into the language teaching business because we like to be around people from different cultures; people who speak different languages; people who add a little flavor to our lives. Our profession doesn't have a monopoly on the passion for discovery. Others are taking their dreams on the road. Even if we can't leave the classroom, we can follow them on the Web. More and more world travelers are leaving a cyber trail.

They're posting photos of what they saw; writing about the people they met; describing what they ate and what they shouldn't have. Put your student sleuths on their trails. A traveler is heading for Thailand? Let your Thai students critique the website. An adventurer is crossing Antarctica or heading up Everest? Let everyone e-mail these lonely types with questions about survival. The problem with a journey in real time is that by the time you learn about it, the journey is over. You have to be vigilant to find the web address for explorers looking for the source of the Sepik River or diving for Cleopatra's palace in the harbor of Alexandria.

A periodic check of the web sites of the Explorers Club (www.explorers.org) will tell you who's going where and how to follow along. For example, at press time, the E-3 Medical Team at Mt. Everest Base Camp is sending daily posts with photos to the Explorers web site (http://www.explorers.org /news.html). On the Explorers Web page there is also a list of sites covering explorations and educational projects by the Club's members. One such link is GlobaLearn (www.globalearn.com) where students around the world can participate in live, interactive expeditions. In Oct-Nov, 1999 GlobaLearn is heading to South Africa. Log on and sign up. Your class can also take virtual field trips. Join an expedition for dinosaurs in Montana with Earthwatch (www.earthwatch.org/ed/ home.html) or participate in an interactive dig in Brooklyn on an 18th century house with the Archaeological Society of America (http://www.he.net/~ archaeol/online/features/lott/index.html).

Solo travelers are sending back their reports too. In 1997, John Burns started to travel around the world and then in 1999 settled in Bangkok to start an Internet Publishing Business. (www.travelog.net).

The Travel Library (http://www.travel-library.com/rtw/html/rtwreciprocal.html) has a list of links of people willing to share their travel stories. (Don't forget you can back up the URL to get to earlier pages of the web site.) One of the travelers on the link exchange is Wee Keng Hor, who has posted beautiful photographs of Xinjiang on the Silk Road (http://www.geocities.com/~kenghor/silkroad/xinjiang-photo.html). Photos make great language activities. And if you're getting itchy feet reading about other people traveling, you can get on the road and post your own adventures back to your class and the world. If you buy a round-the-world ticket from High Adventure Travel (www.airtreks.com), the company will give you space to post your Web-based journal.

Airtrek's round-the-world tickets are as low as $1,100. With the money you save on your ticket, you can buy a good digital camera and post pictures of yourself meditating in Bhutan.