Day 16 - Cultural Experiences Abound

My home stay family has quickly become like another family to me. I've really enjoyed my time with the Jennings family, and their daughters, Sarah and Emily, are very relatable! I can talk to them about music, school, North Carolina, etc, and it's easy to hold a conversation with them. Because of our similar interests, academic backgrounds, geographical locations, and common languages, it's easy to see how we would get along well. However, Modesta and Denada also seem to be getting along as equally as well!

I think something nice about the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows program is the vivid illustration of how cultural barriers often exist in our minds. Despite the difficulty that some of the fellows have speaking English and or conveying ideas in English, it's been very easy to make what seems to be life long friends in this program. I honestly envision myself traveling to different European nations and being able to visit some of these friends, and having some of them visit in the United States. I know that a few have expressed interest in wanting to study here, but have also bemoaned how expensive tuition is. I'm helping them search for scholarships!

Anyway, today, I did various activities that further illustrated more cultural experiences.

Firstly, I attended the Strong Sun Powwow http://nearriverdwellers.com/strongsunpowwow2012/ with my host family. We were able to watch a few Native American tribal dances and traditional performances, as well as a parade of Native American representatives from all over the Americas. Literally, the population represented ranged from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to las indigenas from Ecuador or Guatemala. I also noticed a very strong showing of Native American veterans from the United States Armed Forces present, and very strong support for the veterans present. Despite some of the actions taken by the US government throughout history towards the Native Americans, I thought it was very admirable yet a little confusing how much support there was for the armed forces from the Native Americans. To further prove my point, there were stands of vendors just selling patches, pins, and T-shirts emblazoned with the ARMY, NAVY, or AIR FORCE logos.

But anyway, the performances, clothing, and presentations were all very interesting and authentic! Here I am pretending to be a Chief...

Afterwards, after a period of rest, in which I took advantage of for some of my other work, I attended a "family" dinner with some of our friends from Italy. After some lively discussion about the 2012 Euro Cup, (football is a much more popular sport in Europe than here!) we sat down to some gnocchi. And mozzarella cheese and tomatoes and basil. And baguettes. And pies. And Ghirardelli chocolate. And egg mice.

I also met two Italian students roughly our age there--Elisa and Francesco. More illustrations of how Benjamin Franklin has made it seem so much easier to interact with students from such diverse backgrounds. Before the program, I could and would get along with my friends in Charlotte very well. But I was never exposed to such different cultures in a short period of time, and thus, never made friends with students from all over the world. However, even after talking to Elisa and Francesco for a few hours, we were able to discuss music, put together puzzles (literally--the two little girls wanted us to help them with Winx puzzles), and have conversations in halting English, Italian, and Spanish.

Anyway, long day at Wake Forest ahead tomorrow! I'm looking forward to being back on campus, because I miss everybody! Ciao. xx