I have been living abroad for 7 years abroad in Germany, France, Hong Kong, China and now I am going to the US. I have visited probably more than 20 countries and every-time I go to a new country I take for granted that I do not know how things are going to be there like. The more you go around the world, the less you realize you know.
During these years, I have met a lot of international-oriented people and most of them share this common mindset: an open-minded vision of the world in which there are no assumptions about peoples or countries.
I can give you an example of what this really means to me. I used to live in a dormitory in Paris (2004-06). I am very proud of my impact in the dormitory’s journal. In the dormitory’s cafeteria, French and non-French used to share the same space but did not talk to each other. They had wrong assumptions about each other. I felt uneasy about that. I started writing for the dormitory’s journal and created a section about what France shared with the countries of my roommates. For example, I wrote about Arabic contributions to the French culture or about the German sense of humor explained from a French perspective. People started getting interested: a Moroccan friend began writing, then a Cameroon roommate and a Frenchman… Soon, a group of us from different countries was working in the journal and having dinner together. People who met at the journal continued talking afterwards and a truly international community with no stereotypes started taking place. This is my vision of the world.
Picture: an image from the film Pink Panther 2. The image belongs to Sony Pictures and I found it in LeFigaro.fr
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