I am itching to do some traveling, especially after watching a few travel documentaries today.Just the thought of going to a foreign place, exploring the area, experiencing its local culture and tasting its local delicacies fills me with zest. You get to learn and experience life through traveling. You get to see a different perspective about life. You get to appreciate others' culture. All these are something we are not able to learn at school or through our education system.
I've met many people from various diverse backgrounds. In general, I do find those who are well-traveled tend to be more open, in particular those who have resided in a different country other than their countriy of origin. After some conversation and interaction with them, I could feel their vision tends to differ from those who have not been away. They seem to be more open to accept a different culture. Recently I was attending a talk, the speaker shared her cultural shock experience in working in another country. According to her, even the way of eating pasta differ in two countries of the same continent. "I did not know the Italians do not eat pasta with knives until I was there. This is so different compared to us."
When you take a bus, have you ever noticed what is the passengers' seating preference? Based on my observation, passengers in Asia tend to choose the aisle seat of two seats, whilst North Europeans will tend to choose the window seat out of the two seats. What about visiting someone's house? Do you take off your shoes or do you going around the house with your out door shoes on? This is something I never even consider until I left home because in my home country, we have to take our shoes off before we enter our house or others'. It is considered rude if you walk in just like that without removing your shoes. In contrary, you do not have to do so say if you are going to visit a Greek's. Well, I did not know that. I was removing my shoes at a Greek friend's place, but found that everyone including that friend of mine were wearing outdoor shoes inside the house. I quickly put my shoes on. Well I did not want to be the odd one in the gang. Another reason was I did not want to dirty my socks. Isn't that obvious duh?
There is definitely so much to learn and see from traveling. At least I get to see another interesting thing of different ways of saying hello. If you are visiting an Asian country, don't give a big hug and especially not a kiss on the cheek to an Asia there as a way of saying hello. This is not something some of us are used to; I have seen some feeling awkward when they first stepped feet in a foreign country especially the West. Oh maybe you do want to see the funny expression of us huh?
♥ every page of my imagination
