We’ll continue on with the previous post, where Virginia Shrader talks about her experience living abroad.
One thing I really loved about Latin American culture was that they're not self-conscious. Americans are very self-conscious - they are scared to try stuff since others ridicule them and make fun of them. Another thing I like about Latin American culture is that if you go to a party in America, it's very ageist - old people hang out with old people and so forth. Whereas in Latin America, at my salsa dancing, the granny was holding the baby and everything in between, all the whole family was there, and I loved that - I thought that was so awesome.
When you measure these things, you have to look at socioeconomic and historical trends. Bahrain hit the jackpot not a very long time ago - some people say 100 years ago, some say 50 depending on who you ask. But they just got filthy rich from living in tents and riding camels, and they're very entitled. The children are so rude and so inappropriate that it takes your breath away. I had to work very hard not to think that all Arabs are like these children. I left the school early along with at least 10 other teachers. So I think that socioeconomics factors are important. I found that the sweetest people I ever met were the poorest people. I remember a man in Honduras gave me a piece of cheese so I could try some from his culture, and he didn't look like he had two cents. And there's another thing too. If you meet somebody who's been wounded or hurt: I felt like the Vietnamese forgave us for the war, and I think you know that a lot of Americans were demonstrating against that war and even left the country not to participate in it. But there are a few older Vietnamese that I could tell were still in pain from the horrors that the war cost. So if you meet somebody that has been hurt by a culture they're going to be angry and aggressive and you can't be defensive.
I went out with a Vietnamese woman and her husband once, and they took me out for fun, and I saw her husband's face with grief. He said that Americans destroyed a lot of the sacred temples and shrines, and it hurt my heart like a knife. He didn't take it out on me, he didn't seem to hate me for it, but it really hurts.
So for today the last thing I'll talk about is the Chinese. The Chinese stereotype, I mean, the government, there's a lot of fear about the government, although the police in my neighborhood when I was in Beijing for 4 years were very sweet, very nice, lovely. And the Chinese people were so friendly and so sweet, but they're much more shy than Vietnamese. My students were like you: they were diligent and hard-working, but they were very modest and quiet and they internalized everything. I kind of expected Vietnamese students to be like that too, but you know how to party down. And maybe it is because of the repressive government, because it is indeed dangerous. I didn't experience it directly - I was fortunate but I read enough that I found out about that. You know, my friend - my dear friend that I call him my Chinese angel who did everything for me and helped me with everything - he was scared to post, to write about me on WhatsApp or WeChat. And that is because he knew that the sensors could catch him and he could get in trouble, so it was pretty interesting, you know. There's the governments, the wars, and the power plays; and then there's just the regular ordinary people living their lives. All of us have a configuration of strengths and weaknesses, personality types, the kind of person you get along with, the kind of person that other people get along with better, shared interests, differences of opinion… Life is complicated in case you didn't notice.
Talking about my country America, I don't love capitalism myself - it's so expensive to live here that my face is about to fall off. And I feel like I spend my whole life going to the store, and it's gotten so expensive that people can't spend time with their families, kids are growing up without their mothers because both parents have to work just to scrape by. It has a lot of flaws, and I'm really scared and worried about our country right now. I don't know if you saw the debate, but Biden had some signs of dementia. And in my personal opinion, I hate Trump. So we have a terrible choice of leadership right now. Our economy is in shambles; we've wrecked the planet, we waste plastic. I have a lot of issues with capitalism myself. And we're not really free: we're not free from the text collector, from the tyranny of paying our bills, and maybe the government won't come shoot you in the middle of the night. But you can certainly get in some big trouble if you try to stand up for yourself. I got inappropriately touched by bosses when I was a teenager; it's just recently that women have been able to stand up for themselves, and a lot of them had to pay a terrible price.
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