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My oldest son sent me an email with a video link. I'm not often on the receiving end of his emails so I paid attention. The subject line of the email was "you are not complete as a person until you have seen this." I can't say that I agree (I think I actually am complete without it) but it is enjoyable to watch and has stuck with me for several days.
It is the video of a young man who traveled around the world to videotape himself dancing (albeit a bad dance) with people in countries from one end of the world to the other. At first I thought it was just silly, but afterward I thought about it. "What if each of us could touch another person's life in such a way? That later those people probably said to each other, 'Wasn't that fun when we danced with the silly American man?' Wouldn't other cultures feel differently about Americans if we could just reach out and touch them innocently in friendship?"
This young man believes Americans should travel abroad more. I agree, but what I think is that Americans need to travel abroad with an open mind to touch the hearts of human beings in other cultures -- not just to see/use their country.
You can read his entire story here (warning the website is called Where the He** is Matt? but you can scroll down and make that word disappear if you don't want the kids to see it) but watch the video below. The kids will enjoy it too.
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I don't know. I lived in Germany for three years and I wouldn't change that for the world, but you get an entirely different experience if you just travel than if you live. Europeans travel because getting from one country to another is like traveling to another state for us. They are small countries and close together, and the rail system is incredible. We are geographically more isolated and overseas travel in significantly less convenient...and more expensive.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the tourist issue. Just this week, we visited River Street in Savannah. I've lived here for over four years and this was the first time I've been, and I realized why after we left. It's a tourist destination. Nice enough as a place to visit, but completely lacking in the true flavor of Savannah. Each place I've lived, with the exception of Chicago, has a unique culture, a specialness that the casual tourist would never have time to discover. It takes living with a people to know who they really are.
(The only notable thing about Chicagoans is that they think they are special. In three years, I was unable to discern anything else by which to identify a unique culture. I found it holds true with displaced Chicagoans, too. :-)