Go Alone or Stay Alone

This is the first draft so please check it out what the main contents are rather tan the grammar itself.
If you mention even only one part of my writing, it will be helpful for me. I want to know over-all your comments.
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Have you traveled alone? (except a business trip) (Respond to audience) Wow! It is a good start of my speech. Tonight, I will talk about my traveling a long time ago. It is not a life or death issue, but it was one of my turning points. I traveled Iran in 2001. Just a week before 9/11 I came back to Korea. At that time, I watched two terrific movies which were described totally different sides of Iran. One was <The Children of Heaven> made by an Iranian movie-director and the other was <Not without My Daughter> made by a Hollywood movie-director. So, I made up my mind to go alone to see what the real Iran was. I will tell you 3 aspects about my travel about before, during, after the travel,

First, I’ll tell you what I had been through and why it was hard for me to do it before the travel. Travel Iran? Go alone? Sounds like I was really brave or naive, right? Actually I didn’t travel alone even Korea when I decided to go there. Honestly I’m not independent as a middle child and usually relay on my sister a lot. My sister tells me what I have to do for my life. However, my sister really hated this decision, so she didn’t help me at all. Also, there were not good travel books on Iran in Korean. It was hard to get information about Iran. The worst part was it was impossible to get an Iran visa in Korea as a single woman. So, I bought an English travel book and just booked an airplane ticket to Turkey in order to get an Iran visa first and ‘Go alone’ there.

Second, it’s about what I saw and experienced during the travel. As I mentioned before, I had no idea about going alone or going back-packing, so I just made simple strategies. When I met people, just say hello first but it worked. I could meet a lot of different nationality travelers. I could realize what I had had a vision to the world in Korea was quite narrow. To travel Iran without the ability speaking Parsi is really difficult especially as an unmarried Asian girl. I had several fake husbands in Iran because many Iranian men treated me in a strange way when I said ‘I’m traveling alone’. One of the fake husbands was an English boy. He could speak Arabic and read Parsi and we helped each other a lot. He couldn’t talk to Islamic women but I could. We were invited to several Iranian families. Their hospitality was wonderful. Many people were really awesome and kind to foreigners and women. Their philosophy and religion have beauty. I loved Iranian women’s fashion as well. People say hijab and chador are awful to Islamic women and I agree most of them but I love the design of their scarves pattern and color. Iran was different what I expected from the Iranian movie to the Hollywood movie.

Third, it’s about what I achieved after this travel. I entered a student paper contest about what we can expect Meddle East in the future in my university and got an award. That paper had just lack of information and poor logic but I did my best. A week after back to Korea, 9/11 tragedy happened. It made me more curious about Iran and Islamic culture and their religion. I studied more and compared Iranian movies for my paper. I could see different aspects of Iran what I heard from media which is usually friendly to USA. It is all because I went alone.

In brief, I faced with all difficulties through before, during, after the travel. I realized I had lived such a small world with a small shell. I didn’t make a connection to the world as a global citizen. It seems to stay alone because I didn’t like to go alone. I hope you can find your own big world to break your small shell. Let’s go alone.