I wrote a couple of weeks ago about hosting people on AirBnB and how it's been really cool to trust people and meet strangers who are moving around in the world. To revisit the topic, it's a pretty eye-opening thing.
One of our first guests was a family of four. They had spent the past several weeks at the woman's parents' house in Parma (that's about 15 minutes from our house, for those who don't know) and just needed to get out and be a little closer to the city for a couple of days before they moved to the Congo.
To provide a little more insight, this was a girl from Parma and her husband who she met in Madagascar while she was teaching English. They now have two unbelievably well-behaved (and adorable) children who were about to stomach a 24+ hour trip from Cleveland to Newark to Brussels to Kinshasa, which is the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The husband was from Guinea (that's in west Africa) and before they departed, he gave us a couple of bracelets with the colors of the Guinean flag on them. It was very cool.
Through talking with them I caught myself being made aware of my own ignorance. We westerners often just think of Africa as one big desert because we're taught almost nothing about the continent (pyramids aside, obviously), and yet all we heard was about these cities that are just like any other cities in the world. It makes perfect sense, of course - their apartment would be pretty similar to any apartment anywhere else in the world.
Another example. We've had guests interviewing for positions at the hospital just around the corner from our house. Often times, as you might stereotype, these people are Indian or Pakistani. How much do we actually know about India and Pakistan? I think I'm a pretty smart guy and I knew next to nothing...until our guests started informing us about the culture and about the people.
One guest told me that the standard procedure in Pakistan is that if a friend arrives and is planning to spend the night, the host will demand that the guests sleeps in their bed while the host sleeps on a couch. That same guest was staying at a friend's home in the US for a week or two and the friend makes sure that they switch bed/couch each night to be fair.
Do you think of Northern India and Pakistan as being scenic? Or of having beautiful beaches? They're beautiful. I'm serious. They're so stinking beautiful.
So by hosting strangers from all over the world, I'm continuing to learn about the world. Our Pakistani guest actually offered to host us anytime we wanted to visit Pakistan, or make his family host us if he was busy living/working in the USA at the time. They're apparently just the most welcoming groups in the world - it's pleasantly surprising.
Final example: Would you imagine that schools in Pakistan often teach their students in English? Not just teach them English, but actually conduct all of their classes in English? I figured that there might be schools where this was the norm, and that these schools would be generally populated by students of wealthy families, but I was told that the majority of people in Pakistan are comfortable speaking English and Urdu.
Learning is the coolest.
One of our first guests was a family of four. They had spent the past several weeks at the woman's parents' house in Parma (that's about 15 minutes from our house, for those who don't know) and just needed to get out and be a little closer to the city for a couple of days before they moved to the Congo.
To provide a little more insight, this was a girl from Parma and her husband who she met in Madagascar while she was teaching English. They now have two unbelievably well-behaved (and adorable) children who were about to stomach a 24+ hour trip from Cleveland to Newark to Brussels to Kinshasa, which is the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The husband was from Guinea (that's in west Africa) and before they departed, he gave us a couple of bracelets with the colors of the Guinean flag on them. It was very cool.
Through talking with them I caught myself being made aware of my own ignorance. We westerners often just think of Africa as one big desert because we're taught almost nothing about the continent (pyramids aside, obviously), and yet all we heard was about these cities that are just like any other cities in the world. It makes perfect sense, of course - their apartment would be pretty similar to any apartment anywhere else in the world.
Another example. We've had guests interviewing for positions at the hospital just around the corner from our house. Often times, as you might stereotype, these people are Indian or Pakistani. How much do we actually know about India and Pakistan? I think I'm a pretty smart guy and I knew next to nothing...until our guests started informing us about the culture and about the people.
One guest told me that the standard procedure in Pakistan is that if a friend arrives and is planning to spend the night, the host will demand that the guests sleeps in their bed while the host sleeps on a couch. That same guest was staying at a friend's home in the US for a week or two and the friend makes sure that they switch bed/couch each night to be fair.
Do you think of Northern India and Pakistan as being scenic? Or of having beautiful beaches? They're beautiful. I'm serious. They're so stinking beautiful.
So by hosting strangers from all over the world, I'm continuing to learn about the world. Our Pakistani guest actually offered to host us anytime we wanted to visit Pakistan, or make his family host us if he was busy living/working in the USA at the time. They're apparently just the most welcoming groups in the world - it's pleasantly surprising.
Final example: Would you imagine that schools in Pakistan often teach their students in English? Not just teach them English, but actually conduct all of their classes in English? I figured that there might be schools where this was the norm, and that these schools would be generally populated by students of wealthy families, but I was told that the majority of people in Pakistan are comfortable speaking English and Urdu.
Learning is the coolest.
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