Why I am the way I am

     So I guess I should start with an introduction. I am in loooovvvveee with everything that has to do with traveling. The experience, the excitement, the adventure, but mostly, I feel traveling makes me more accepting and open minded towards other people and cultures by understanding them. It makes me a better person and it helps me grow in ways nothing else does. I have done quite a bit of traveling on my own throughout Europe. I lived on the Greek Islands for three months and then in Naples, Italy for four. 

     

     My first time in Europe was to visit my brother who was studying abroad in Belgium, and ever since then I have been hooked. Its quite easy as an American to have a certain view of immigrants who come to our country. If they don't speak our language, they take our jobs, they commit crimes and don't pay taxes. If you look at only these things, its easy to look at them negatively. I grew up in a middle upper class white suburban bubble outside of Cincinnati. There was not a lot of diversity. And most of the only interaction I had with other cultures were with immigrants I did not understand and through the news with the crime reports.

     The first time I went to Europe, I was the outsider. I was the one stepping on their toes. I was the one who needed help. I didn't speak their language and wasn't from their country. When I needed help, I expected them to look down on me because I wasn't the same as them. The same way I feel its so easy for us as Americans to look at people negatively because they don't speak English. But they didn't. They went out of their way to help me. If I asked them for help in the only five french words I knew, they didn't look at me like I was lower than them, they really tried to help me find my way. It was this moment that has changed my life forever. At that moment, I understood a new level of cultural acceptance, open-mindedness and learning through experience. I was truly humbled.

     Ever since this first trip to Europe, I have had a fire inside of me to not only see other cultures, but to experience them, learn about them and understand them. In a way, I think that if everyone did this, it would bring the world a lot closer together. Call me a dreamer, call me what you want. But I am a perfect example of this. Travel has opened my eyes, broadened my horizons and continues to break down barriers I previously thought to exist. So it is with this, that my dream came alive. 

     There are some people who will never travel to these places, and there are a lot of negative media depictions in the world. The media does this to get us to read the paper. And it causes a lot of negative emotions towards these other countries that we may know nothing about. What if other countries only saw negative news about America? I'm sure they would have a negative view about our country, and there are enough negative things that happen in such a big country, I'm sure its easy to make our country look bad. But that isn't all America is. We understand this because we live here and we experience it every day.