It’s sometimes scary to think about how we know nothing of the completely different lives people live across the globe. There are so many unique countries, cultures, and customs out there.
How can we unite ourselves with the world?
The answer is, to expose yourself to it, and travel.
But what if we can’t? What if we don’t have the means, or have a family and job to tend to? What do we do then?
The answer is to meet the ones that have traveled to you.
I realized this when I walked out of this week’s French Club meeting. After the meeting had ended, I stood outside with the people I met for about an hour, just talking about different countries and things we know about the world. That one hour of my life was such an enriching experience, and I can’t compare it to any other hour I’ve spent in a classroom. Its so easy to become friends with people that have been to the places you’ve never been. They have knowledge that you don’t have, and discovering what they know, is such a beautiful process. You can talk to them forever, there is no topic that is too plain or too boring.
After that hour, I felt like I had just gotten home from exploring the world. For a moment I forgot I was at Penn State. I’ve never met such a diverse and interesting group of people. I talked to a french guy who has lived in Singapore for 5 years. I was enthralled by all the stories he told me. He’s been to 57 countries! Imagine what he learned from them!
There was a guy from Albania, who speaks 5 languages! He was talking to a friend next to him, switching back and forth between three languages. Imagine all the conversations he could have!
As me and my friend were walking home, we spoke in french. A guy overheard us speaking and yelled “PARLEZ-VOUS FRANCAIS?”. And just like that, we all immediately became friends. I’ve never met this kid in my life, I knew nothing about him, but we talked as if we knew each other for years. Knowing just one specific language was something that united all of us.
Oftentimes we are stuck in a box of our own ways of life. Get out of that box! Listen to the people who’ve who have been places you haven’t! They have so much knowledge that you don’t have. Ask them questions. Ask them more questions. Let them teach you, and let yourself teach them! Nobody’s experiences are the same, you can learn from anyone and let anyone learn. Just do it!
I believe it is so important to experience cultures and languages that are not similar to our own, when I visited Hawaii this summer it was really eye opening to how people can live so different and raw compared to what I was use to. I wish that growing up my school implemented learning languages earlier on so it would have been easier to pick up on, because high school was way too late for me to even begin to become partially fluent.
Multi-Lingual people are so cool, my friend took a year abroad in high school and lived in Paris. When I visited him, I experienced that same shock and awe factor you described. He would converse with his friends across 3-4 different languages and depending on who he was talking he would shift languages. It was an inspiring experience to watch and made me commit to becoming Spanish fluent.
My family and I have always loved traveling, and your blog post reminded me of the time we visited Europe and went to Belgium, France, and Italy. Here in America, it is most common to only speak one language, but in all of the European countries my family and I visited, it was rare that natives were bilingual as most of them spoke at least three languages fluently.