My International Experiences
by Lisa Bloomingdale
I’ve always found myself to be socially accepting of others who are different from me, ethnically or otherwise. People from other cultures tend to fascinate me, because there are so many cultures that are so different from my own. And I am even more amazed to see some people adapt from one culture to another. All throughout my life I have been influenced by my family, school, religion, peers, and the media about how to view people who are different from me.
I grew up in a Catholic household, where I was taught to pray before meals and go to Church every Sunday. In the third grade, I switched from public school to a Catholic school, so as to better learn about my religion. One of the main things I learned was that the word “catholic” means “open to the whole world” or “universal.” To me, this definition meant that I should be accepting of all others, no matter who they are. I learned that no one in excluded in the kingdom of God. Therefore, I tried to be welcoming when meeting new people; and I also tried to avoid being prejudiced toward anything. But of course, like any typical middle-schooler, I got caught in various cliques and left out people I thought “didn’t belong.” I later learned that this is one of the easiest ways to hurt someone. So today, I try to be more inclusive in my actions, considering the feelings of those around me.
In high school, I took a World Religions class, in which I learned about the beliefs of different peoples about the globe. I found the course material very interesting, and it prompted me to question my own beliefs. This, coupled with the death of my mother shortly after, sent me into full denial of Catholicism; and admittedly, it leaves me feeling a little empty sometimes. Despite the fact that I don’t attend religious services or pray before meals anymore, I still try to embrace the Catholic teaching of being open to and accepting of everyone. I find people of other cultures to be intriguing and wonderful to listen to. I pride myself on indulging in my curiosities, including those of international relations.
My small, private, single-sex high school was mostly Caucasian; however I was able to come across a few foreign students. When I was a freshman, there was a foreign exchange student in my French class. Her name was Yani, and she was from China. Since I sat next to her in class, I asked her all sorts of questions about where she came from and how she like it here in America. For Christmas she gave me some authentic chopsticks and Chinese coins. I have not kept in touch with her since she went back to China, but I still treasure the experience of getting to know her.
I’ve also befriended people from Liberia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brazil, Guatemala, Vietnam, South Korea, Saipan, France, Scotland, India, Mexico, and Australia. Some of these friendships I can accredit to the World Wide Web. The Internet has made international communication as simple as a few clicks with the mouse. I think one can learn a lot about a person’s way of living through simple conversation. However, there have also been some communication barriers. Many times I will use idioms and foreigners will take them literally. However, I still enjoy meeting new people from other countries.
I work as a dental assistant for a woman from Saipan. Our secretary is from Mexico. And many of our patients are immigrants to the United States. Many times I will find myself struggling to pronounce names of those from Africa, India, and other various parts of Asia. But they all seem to come into the office with a smile on their faces. One of the things I learned at my job is that I should get to know ten new things about a patient before starting to work on them. This prompts me to ask questions about their lives, as well as joke around with them.
I’ve noticed that people from Asia tend to be much more gentle than Americans. My employer, Mina, is especially this way. She has a gentle touch when handling objects; she is soft-spoken and extremely polite. She is very cautious about cleanliness, always claiming that, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” She is also very cautious about personal health. I’d much rather eat the nutritious food she provides in our lounge for lunch than go out for some fast food. Unlike us capitalist Americans, as a dentist, Mina would rather do above average work, even if it causes her to go overtime and lose money; instead of only doing a mediocre job of taking care of her patients, so that she could squeeze more into one day. This is another action that teaches me about how she was raised.
Many times in the office I will hear her talking on the phone to her family in Saipanese. I am constantly in awe of those who can speak more than one language, and so well, too. I only took two years of French in high school; and though I did fairly well, I never continued to fully learn the language. Mina tells me that if I ever hear her make a terribly big grammatical mistake, I should go ahead and correct her. In this way, we teach each other. I learn much about her way of life through her actions and conversation than I ever could from a textbook.
One of the things I love about working with two foreign women is that they love to eat foreign cuisines. Many times we will go out for lunch, and I have now come to love food from Greece, Mexico, China, Europe, and anywhere in the Pacific Rim. You can always catch me snacking on raw pickled ginger or sushi. Corny as it sounds, I love going to IHOP, the International House of Pancakes, because they serve Swedish, French, and German pancakes as well as boring buttermilk pancakes. I think cuisine is a big part of foreign culture, and it should be enjoyed as much as any other aspect.
Last June I took a trip with my family to San Diego and Los Angeles. While I was there, I fell in love with the Mexican culture. My boyfriend Seth, who was raised in California, showed me around, teaching me parts of the language and introducing me to authentic Mexican food. Mexicans in California act differently than they do here in the Midwest; because there are more of them there, and they feel more comfortable embracing their own ethnicity. Seth and I always make the joke that Los Angeles is the only place where the minority is the majority. My trip to California, along with having many Mexican friends, has showed me that they value their family and hard work more than I do. Although I was still in California, I felt like I was in another country because everyone around me acted differently than what I was used to.
I also felt like I had gone to another country when I spent a week up at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota last March. Technically, the reservation is a sovereign nation, so it is a little like going to another country. There, I spent most of my time doing service work and being educated about the Native American culture. They take pride in doing work for themselves. The group I went up with spent a lot of time going to small towns in the area, learning about their religion, their schools, their housing, the way they view the U.S. government, the way they view alcoholism, and how they interact with others like myself. The Lakota Indians were so accepting of me, and so willing to teach me about their culture, that I felt like I was a part of them by the time I left. No one in our group wanted to leave, because Pine Ridge was such a peaceful place.
When I got home, I compared the way I live with my family to the way I lived on the reservation. At home I noticed that we hardly ever see each other, we rarely eat together, and we don’t even share the same religion. I’ll hear my dad make racist comments when watching the news, and it saddens me when I see my brother act the same way a couple days later. I always hope that maybe my brother will be influenced by others, as I have, to learn to be accepting of everyone, no matter who they are. He goes to a Jesuit school as well, so I can imagine they are also trying to teach him a great deal about diversity. Not to say that my dad is a racist or a bad person, but he has a few things to learn.
My family, ethnically, is English, Irish, and Dutch. Our name, Bloomingdale, comes from Holland, and means “flowering meadow.” However, this is all strictly on my dad’s side of the family. On my mom’s side of the family, there is such a mix that I don’t know anything about where they come from. My grandma had four daughters, each with different fathers, so I don’t know anything about my biological grandpa. My adopted grandfather is mostly Swedish, and his family grew up in Maine. He has taught me a lot about life in New England, and of course he has gotten me to love quality seafood.
However, I never really embrace any of my actual heritage. In the fourth grade, my school held a “Heritage Day” where we had to do research on our family and present it to the class. My parents didn’t know much about our background either, so they sent me off to school with a bunch of Irish knick-knacks that had once belonged to my great-aunt. A few years later, knowing my brother would also have to endure “Heritage Day,” my grandmother did some extensive research, and traced our family tree back as far as she could. Now we have a binder full of family history, which, sadly to say, I have only skimmed. Somehow, she traced our line back to Adam and Eve, which I think is impossible since I don’t believe Adam and Eve ever really existed. Despite that black binder of history, our family never celebrates any one heritage; and we tend to go about our boring American lives, thinking only of ourselves and what is good for us.
The media is not much help. By media, I usually mean the biased local news. They seem to feed us all sorts of propaganda about other countries. The news only tells you what they want you to hear, and they only want you to hear what our governmental leaders have to say. If George Bush decides he doesn’t like someone, then by golly, we Americans better not like them either. One thing I love about America though, is the freedom to think differently. Despite the one-sidedness of much of what I see on television, I am still able to think and act for myself. I have had trouble choosing my political views, though.
During this last “conflict,” I was being fed propaganda from both sides. My household is strictly Republican, and at school, I was being highly influenced by my very liberal Justice and Peace teacher. I sort of followed the crowd, joining the peace rallies on the corners of 72nd and Dodge, only to come home to prejudiced comments about Middle Easterners. This prompted me to become more liberal in my own views, thinking that what Bush was doing was wrong. But finally, I got to the point where I was being fed both extreme views that I got stuck in the middle and declared that I had no opinion on the whole matter. I simply decided that I was going to be accepting of other people, and leave politics out of it.
My friends, coworkers, and travels have taught me a lot about how my life could be. I learn about other ethnicities only to compare them to my own and realize how empty my life seems. The other cultures I have experienced seem to value family and friendship and religion more than my own. They seem to be less selfish and more compassionate about their neighbors. I try to follow their examples, and bring those values into my own life. I do my best to continue to learn, through school and personal experiences, about tolerating and accepting others, despite personal differences.
Grade: 90%
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