I’ve Received a Liebster Award!

11 September, 2017

Celebrating My First Award!

Erin Hardie of Downbubble Travels has crowned me the next queen of the 2017 Liebster award ceremony. Actually, she crowned 6 of us. And we have to pass the crown on to 5–11 other newbies as soon as possible. You know, so that there are only winners and no losers. Win-win! Um…er, OK let me start over.

Hi! I’m the voice behind The Travelling Sociologist and my website has been chosen for the solidaristic Liebster Award for emerging travel bloggers, by the wonderful Erin Hardie who also has an Instagram and a Twitter account that you should check out and subscribe to if you’re more into social media surfing than blog reading. (And frankly, why not just subscribe to all three? You’ll have triple the fun.) What exactly is this Liebster Award, you might be wondering? Let me explain, because it’s a pretty cool tag team rally, actually. Liebster in German means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. And the Liebster award is a travel-blogger community initiative for supporting and showcasing new blogs. In order to accept this award, I must respond to Erin’s request to write a 150 to 300–word post about my favourite blog (that is not my own, hehe), and explain why I like that blog. So here goes…(cue award acceptance speech, delivered from a giant podium in front of the attentive eyes of more than 1 million viewers on live Internet…eek!).

My Favourite Blog

My favourite blog is I Am Aileen, which also, incidentally, inspired me to turn my passion into a business by going pro with my travel-writing hobby. Aileen Adalid, the founder of I Am Aileen, is a fearless warrior of global travel, a third-world-passport-wielding digital nomad, and a solo female traveller who quit her corporate job in the Philippines at age 21 to pursue her dreams of travelling the world and owning her own business.

Aileen has ceaselessly impressed me and inspired me through her detail-oriented, strong writing skill and empowering writing style, her outstandingly helpful travel guides and counselling on everything from budget travel to culture-discovery itineraries to starting your own travel blog, and her unassuming, down-to-earth, absolutely lovable personality. She may not yet have made it to every country in the world but she is conquering the globe like a BOSS. And she is so good at what she does, and at generously sharing all that she learns with her readers in her journey around the world, that you can’t help but rally behind her and be inspired by her and learn from her, about her, and about yourself. Want to know more? Read her blog now!

For the next Liebster award, I will be nominating:

• Peggy from Gracefully Global who puts her global-citizen identity to use by encouraging others to travel and by blogging about her own travel experiences through photography and storytelling
• Jasmine from Questa Dolce Vita who packed her bags for Italylove, after just a little over a year of pharmacy practice, and now blogs about her adventures as a Canadian expat in Bergamo, Italy
• Kurt W. Winner, a travel photographer and writer who co-curates the Culinary Traveler with Michelle M. Winner. Kurt is passionate about cooking and about upholding the cultural traditions and nutritional integrity of food, which he seeks to honour through his camera lens in his travels around the world
• Moira Dennis from StylePackGo.com who blogs about travel fashion to help style-conscious women figure out what to pack for their international travels
• Amanda from VeraVise WOW Travels who blogs about family travel in North America, including Disney-themed trips, Northeast Tennessee and the Appalachian mountains where she’s from, and foodie destinations for children with food allergies

Please take some time to explore the travel blogs of these new nominees!

Liebster Award Rules

Keep the flame of this awards ceremony lit and pass it on to the next generation of emerging travel bloggers by following these simple rules when you decide to accept the Liebster award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and post a link to their blog on your blog. Try to include a little promotion for the person who nominated you. They will thank you for it and those who you nominate will also help you out as well.
2. Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget.” Find these here.
3. Write a 150-300 word post about your favourite blog that is not your own. Explain why you like the blog, provide links.
4. Respond to the questions provided by the blogger who nominated you for the award (see below).

Here are The Travelling Sociologist’s questions for the new nominees:

4a. Out of all the countries you have visited, which one did you like the most and why?
4b. What is the most out-of-your-comfort-zone thing you have ever done while travelling and what did you learn from the experience?
4c. What is the scariest thing you have experienced (to you or around you) while travelling?
4d. Travelling helps us learn, grow, and discover who we are on a deeper level – what is one lesson you’ve learnt and grown from, during travel, either from a minor mishap or a major challenge?

5. Nominate 5–11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, and that have a small readership.
6. List these rules in your post.
7. Inform the people/blogs you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post. (They might not have ever heard of it!)
8. Post a comment in the comments of –> the award post <– so your post and blog can be viewed.

Thanks for reading this post and have fun discovering new blogs!

In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to The Travelling Sociologist to have new travel adventures and educational cultural insights delivered right into your inbox! I promise I won’t bombard you with e-mails – no more than 1 per week, at most.