Last weekend I went out with a group of 15 German young people and I am still surprised of how great it was. On the one hand it was just a common party, with people like me having fun in a foreign country. But in the other hand it was completely different to any other party I have ever stayed in Mexico, with my friends. The environment was completely different.
Understanding environment as the social and cultural forces that shape the life of a person or a society, my approximation to this essay will be from a sociological point of view.
Since I arrive to this foreign country three months ago, I have barely spoke in Spanish, I have not met any other person with my same nationality and I started to realize that all the things that constitute my environment, my own reality, here does not mean anything. All our political issues, our economy, all the factors that represent our daily life are complete obsolete to another realities. Then I understood that for the Saudi Arabian student sited next to me, for who is the first time that shares a classroom with girls, was exactly the same.
We have grown with the knowledge that there are different cultures such as different ways to live, but that doesn’t make any sense until we actually experiment another cultures an another ways to live. As a result, to me the most shocking part has been to understand that here is no an absolute true, that what is a fact to some cultures, to others could be the complete opposite. But must of all, the admission that as much as we see ourselves as citizens of the world, and as an open mind society, there will always be facts inside our ideology that is proper to our specific environment in which we have developed.
Even tough, if I had to say my opinion, I would say that every foreign student in a foreign country suddenly develop a very deeply proud of his own culture and country. The feeling that I have experienced is that you are so use to think and to live according to your own environment, and you are such convinced that “your truth is the best truth” that you want to share it with the others, and let them know how things should be, or given appropriate to tell the other how are the things work in your country.
Or maybe all of us are citizens of the world who have been collocated in different regions and who have developed different cultures and as a result, we grew up with a very specific environment which allow us to distinguish from the others. But also that is part of being human, the diversity of all of us.
>Maya
CausatusMentis 