Seeing My Culture Through Someone Else's Eyes

Last week my friend shared a story with me.  It was of her first experience being to another country... the United States.  Hearing her tell her story and seeing the excitement in her eyes reminded me just how amazing an experience it is to experience a different culture from your own... doing things you only ever dreamed you could do.

Now, I have been riding in airplanes ever since I was very tiny... so I don't have one specific memory of the "first time" I rode in a plane as she did as an adult, but based on new things I have done in life I can only imagine how crazy of an experience that would have been.

She had so much pride in being the first in her family to travel in an airplane and being the first to visit a country that is so difficult to get permission to see.  It filled me with pride, as well: both for her and for me.  I am the only one in my immediate family to do what I am doing, too.  While our experiences are very different, the emotions and ideas are very much the same.

The funniest part for me was seeing my culture through her eyes.  There were things that I had never thought of as "our culture" before, but they were clearly very new and different for her.

She describes arriving at the LA airport, seeing magazine stands, things she had only seen in movies. 

She tells a story of waiting at a crosswalk light... wondering why it will never change.  Her and her friend get ready to run for it, through the speeding cars, when a man walks up and pushes the button. 

She shows me a picture of her in front of an unnecessarily large truck.  She tells me that it was not until she printed the picture that she realized there was a man in the truck for the 5 minutes she posed taking the picture.

She laughs as she talks about eating at a Chinese restaurant where all she wanted was normal rice, but ended up with some weird sauce that did not resemble the rice and beans she missed. 

She recounts with disgust the story of discovering that onion rings were filled with onions and were not, in fact, round french fries. 

She shows me pictures of the seals at La Jolla Cove and the house where Michael Jackson lived.

What really hit me, was the realization that all these stories... these stories are my life right now.  I am the person "discretely" taking pictures of people's "outside living rooms" and frantically recording all of the weird situations that I get in; situations that to the people here, probably seem normal.  I am the person not understanding how simple things work or being surprised at what the heck I just ate.

Life is funny that way, isn't it?  Seeing it through someone else's eyes.  I am just so grateful to be having the opportunities to share these eyes with friends, people I meet, and with people who read the stories I write.