Great Experience!!!!

As I sit here in the dwindling time I have left on this trip I think about all of the new experiences that I have been through and how much I realized that one can grow in five weeks. I have been thinking about all the things that have opened my eyes over here in Europe. In my travels to Edinburgh, Scotland, Paris France, London England, Birmingham England and many more trips all over England I think about the responses that I received from people that I was an American. In some countries I was accepted as just another human being, however in others there was a stiff sense of dislike toward Americans. I reflect back to a story that Professor Goar told us in class about her trip to Turkey. To make a long story short she was at dinner and this dinner involved many people from many countries and the MC would go around and introduce all the countries and use various countries throughout the night to do different activities. However the MC seemed to pass over their table many times and throughout the night ended up never calling on their table once because of the American Flag representing their group. I tried to think of why this would have happened and could not come up with anything other then that this man must have not liked Americans. I cannot fully understand why this is. I know that we are not on the best terms with the world at this point however I just don’t see why this would happen. I mean we are all individuals and should be treated as individuals. In this vastly globalizing world I do not understand how stereotypes and racism and hate continue to grow. Everyday in the states we are reminded to accept everyone for who they are, how ever the rest of the world seems to continue to hate Americans. I do agree that there are some Americans that believe that every country should know the English Language and never attempt to learn even basic phrases to help them bridge the language gap and I do not agree with this. I think that if you are traveling to a foreign country that you should be obligated to learn the language in order to bridge that gap or at least some small phrases to get you by.
Along with Dr. Goar’s experiences I also ran into my own. While traveling in France I conducted a few small social experiments of my own. Since I knew a small amount of French I used that to initiate conversations, I also initiated conversation just speaking in English with my American Accent, and finally I used a horrible fake British accent to start conversations. I notice that I received the best response when I used my French to initiate and then the fake British accent and finally my American Accent. I could understand this because it seems a little more polite to know a countries language when initiating conversation. However I could not understand how my horrible British accent received a better reaction then being American.
I just feel that from this trip that I have learned a lot. I believe that when I return home I’m going to try my hardest to make people that I run in to in America that are visiting that I’m going to try and make them feel as comfortable as possible. It is just not right to feel the way I felt in France and we should all accept all people as the individual that they are and not any different because they come from a country that is not so appreciated on the global scale.

Brent