Welcome to my blog, conversations around the world. At the age of twelve my neighbor introduced me to an international peace organization called CISV and through CISV I have traveled to Norway twice, Portugal, and Brazil. CISV is an organization that seeks to build cultural understanding and global friendship between children of different nations to create a more just and peaceful world. Through CISV I have met students from over thirty different countries and conversations I have had with these students have helped me make connections between issues in the United States and other counties, and it has allowed me to look at problems on a global scale. I also have traveled more recently to eastern Europe where I stayed in hostels and met other young adults exploring the world and through this trip met many interesting travelers. So now that I have given some background on what this blog is going to look like lets dive into my first adventure, my trip to Norway.
The summer after I joined CISV I participated in an exchange program with six other kids from Pittsburgh and six kids from Norway. My family hosted a girl named Maren for two weeks and then I spent two weeks with her family in Norway. Initially I remember being amazed at her ability to switch from speaking Norwegian to English. Although Maren struggled with speaking English at first, it was surprising to see how quickly she improved her English in so little time. I realized how lucky I am to know English as my first language because so many people in the world must know their native language and English in order to get a certain jobs. Maren also sparked my interest in learning another language because I realized in order to fully immerse yourself into another culture it is essential to be able to speak the native language and if so many people in the world have to learn English shouldn’t I learn another language too. Also, it was interesting to learn how Maren watched many of the same movies I did and listened to a lot of the same music because the United States plays a huge role in the media around the world.
While I was in Norway, I remember many thoughts going through my head, but also many beautiful sites. Norway has an amazing landscape with many stunning monuments and statues I can still vividly remember today and if you ever go to Norway, you should check them out. Maren lived in the capital of Norway, Oslo, so we spent a lot of time exploring the city and the beautiful scenery around it. One of my favorite statues in Norway was called Monolitten because of the vivid detail of the different people depicted within the statue. Another cool spot to check out is an island not too far from Oslo, Jomfruland. Maren had a lake house right next to Jomfruland so we spent a few days traveling through Jomfruland. This island offers a perfect place to swim and a beautiful forest to explore.
I am very interested in your travels around the world. Your insight to the U.S. media playing a large role in other cultures interests and yet somehow doesn’t surprise me. I fully agree that if other languages and cultures learn English, we should somehow pay our respects back to them by at least learning one other language, yet it is interesting how people think this and never take action. I assume it is just because we, as Americans, are a typically lazy bunch and are primarily focused on ourselves, since we play such large roles in many other countries,like with the media, that we don’t really give second thoughts about what those cultures can contribute to our nation. I feel that if our nation can have such a large impact on them, that they are probably capable of having at least some kind of an impact back on us if we tried to listen and learn about them. I can see that from your adventures you are gaining an appreciation of other cultures and I hope that with this blog you can spread it to at least our microscopic sub-unit of America.