Home Written Stream of Consciousness 3/17/2013
It is very difficult
to truly understand a foreign culture without actually immersing yourself in
that culture and actually having life experiences that resemble those of the
people you are visiting. Once you are able to have these experiences you’re
able to feel a lot more comfortable in a different culture, and you become fit
to express your opinion in terms of that culture. It’s noticeable in Holy Cow that Sarah MacDonald makes an
attempt to truly understand the Indian culture, because she tries to get in
touch with the true, quintessential Indian soul. Once she’s able to get in
touch with her “Indian” soul, she becomes a traveler, because not only does she
visit India in order to go to the ordinary tourist attractions, but she has
more of a personal, in the “nitty gritty”, point of view. This demonstrates how
a person can change from being a simple tourist that has the common purposes
for going on a trip, to a traveler that can get in touch with other people and
have an understanding of what it is to be a part of a particular culture. This
life experience taught her to “Never say
Never” because she had previously said that she didn’t want to return to
India, but when she did, she was able to realize that there was more to India
than what she had seen.
In my opinion, this was both an
internal and an external journey for her because not only did she go around India
travelling, but she also had a change in her state of mind. On a personal note,
this didn’t happen to me directly, but when I went to China with my family for
the first time, my mom didn’t have such a good time, and she was afraid to
taste the food, and she was afraid to go into dark alley ways to buy fake “stuff”
(which I did with my brother and my reluctant sister) but when we went back,
she actually tried to get more in touch, and she spoke with the people that
spoke English, and she tried to do as many things as she could do, despite her
physical limitation. (She has a bad knee, from an accident.)
I will close with a
quote, which I find has a little bit to do with the theme at hand, because the
USA is a melting pot of several cultures, and you can find something different within
miles:
“And I will do everything
that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the
American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God by
different names but we remain one nation.” –B. Obama
