Assignment from my Globalization 420 class.
I timidly walked up to the counter and asked, “Tiene huevos”? The man I spoke to looked horrified and I immediately felt sick and wondered what I had said to so offend him. It was my first week in Barquisimeto, Venezuela where I lived in the early 80s. As it turns out, when you want to buy eggs, you don’t ask, “Do you have eggs”? You should say, “Are there eggs”? I had just asked this man if he had ovaries.
Living in Venezuela in my early twenties was my first real experience with cultural differences. Even though the people I met there were wonderful (some are still friends to this day), it was a shocking realization for me to see how very different that culture was from mine. In the article, "Culture and Globalization" by the Suny Levin Institute it states, "The fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among human kind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural."
From the language they spoke, to the clothes they wore, everything seemed different. It was so easy for me to dislike what I saw and hence by default, the people themselves. But as I gradually learned to speak the Spanish they spoke - and not the version I had learned in school - I became acclimated to their way of life. To this day I am enamored by their language, music, food, and customs. I wonder what it will take to ease this world into the ever growing blending of boundaries, and the differences we face as we connect in ways that have never happened in the history of mankind. From my limited experience, I know it will take time and a desire to see past those differences. Then, and only then, can we appreciate and even love those who are different from us.
Living in Venezuela in my early twenties was my first real experience with cultural differences. Even though the people I met there were wonderful (some are still friends to this day), it was a shocking realization for me to see how very different that culture was from mine. In the article, "Culture and Globalization" by the Suny Levin Institute it states, "The fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among human kind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural."
From the language they spoke, to the clothes they wore, everything seemed different. It was so easy for me to dislike what I saw and hence by default, the people themselves. But as I gradually learned to speak the Spanish they spoke - and not the version I had learned in school - I became acclimated to their way of life. To this day I am enamored by their language, music, food, and customs. I wonder what it will take to ease this world into the ever growing blending of boundaries, and the differences we face as we connect in ways that have never happened in the history of mankind. From my limited experience, I know it will take time and a desire to see past those differences. Then, and only then, can we appreciate and even love those who are different from us.
Weaving
Arepas
Plaza
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