Learning "how things are done" in other very different places does tend to make you smarter. In several ways, including but not limited to: - you are forced to

Learning "how things are done" in other very different places does tend to make you smarter. In several ways, including but not limited to: - you are forced to solve new problems imposed by your surroundings, which makes you a better problem-solver generally - you become exposed to and aware of different ways that other cultures solve problems, which widens your own tool set - you become more aware of some of your own default cultural/political/technological assumptions, and thus better able to set some of those biases aside when you face problems for which they aren't appropriate. A weekend package tour won't give you much of that, but living for a few weeks or months someplace significantly different than your home country often will.