外國人的Lessons

Sometimes I think of like, people ask me a lot like what are the most valuable lessons you learn spending like half our your life in a different country. 

Honestly if I had to say one thing, [I know I can’t speak for everyone as people learn different lessons] but I think it’s really of no difference where you spend your time abroad and after a certain length of time there’s no new lessons to be learned honestly, but the lesson is that people are exactly the same. Sure we have our cultural differences, and languages divide us, but the more you understand and overcome these “barriers”, you realize, at least I’ve realized, that while we have small cultural attributes that color us as people in a sense, we are no different from each other no matter where we live or what languages we speak. For the most part.

A lot of the times what I do find about Asian culture is just their blind assumptions of stereotypes of other cultures, which really is grounded on stupidity, and perhaps thanks to media and entertainment culture of western nations. But when you think of it, a lot of western nationas probably have similar, maybe less extreme views of Asia as well. 

But you really open up and break down those walls by travelling and exposing yourself to real culture, rather then what we learn through books and tv. I’ve seen so many people that have elected to study at university prior to become semi-fluent in a language prior to coming to a country of their choosing. Honestly I skipped that process and just kind of hopped in Japan and did a two year intensive course. When you’re young you just really soak up language so fast. Even when I started learning Chinese at 24, it was so much slower then learning Japanese at 18.