Experience and exposure are keys to wisdom. If you walk through an airport and some guy in a military uniform trains his machine gun on you the whole time he can see you, you gain a little different perspective of things. If you see a pickup load of police roar up and police with real automatic weapons jump out and arrest a man walking with his 3 little kids to the zoo across the street, it opens your eyes a bit. If you see someone so poor they are starving to death begging for anything on a street, you understand how bad poverty can really get. You can also see incredible waterfalls, eat awesome food and enjoy some incredible people. If possible when you go, learn at least basic language. If you can say please, thank you, I'm sorry and where is the bathroom you open up almost every door and the language barrier falls considerably. I'm reasonably fluent in Spanish which can help you in Italy and if you understand the difference in how syllables are accented and pronounced you can even use Spanish at a survival level in French speaking countries. Baltic, German and other languages are not my strength. Third world countries can be affordable to travel in, I would advise avoiding Haiti until you have experience in third world travel, it takes a lot of survival skills compared to other places. Understand the endemic corruption and moral character of countries you plan to go to, petty theft may be standard life, which if your backpack with your passport get's stolen will make your life very tough and miserable. Police won't help you until you pay the customary bribe, which you can't do because your money was in your pack. Stuff like that. Get's you out of the complacent American attitude that safety and security afford us. I know this doesn't apply to you, but I've seen it so many times with Americans abroad. When a local doesn't understand your impeccable English, yelling doesn't help them to understand any better. People always get a little louder each time they use their English phrase. It's embarrassing, but when you say please it makes you look like a genius by comparison.