I think you can consider yourself as a lucky person if you have had the opportunities to visit new countries and to share your values and culture with people coming from another community. When I talk about "travel", I'm not only talking about going to a foreign country, but also about discovering a new community, new ways of acting, thinking and living. You can discover for example that because of the colonization, you can encounter in two different bordering countries two populations coming from the same ethnic group that has been divided by the delimitation of the borders. Knowing this, we can now avoid doing the same error in the future. We all heard about the word "racism" or "xenophobia" but, but who really understand their significance and how these ideas growth up in people head? Racism and xenophobia are in reality the fear of others, the fear and the apprehension of all what we don't know or seen before. Taking the time to know better other communities, allows to avoid the conception of racism in our head, because you better understand the others. Being myself an international student, every day I gain benefits from being in close contacts with Americans, Chinese, and people coming from all over the world, because I learn everyday new techniques, and I do what we call borrowing from another culture, to ameliorate myself and back to my country in the future to apply all what I would have learned.
I really enjoyed reading your entry. I would say I am well-traveled compared to a majority of my friends and I have noticed that my appreciation for other cultures is much greater than theirs because of it. I admit that after traveling to Brazil, Africa, Mexico and more I have experienced major culture shock. It opened my eyes to different ways of life and most importantly made me thankful for what I have. I hope to travel to new places as I get older to witness more of what people all over the world have to offer.
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