Disclaimer: I knew all of what I'm about to say before on an intellectual level but experiencing it was something different. So in the US, no one even blinks an eye when someone of a different ethnicity speaks English. As Americans, we generally expect the people in our country to speak English. Travelling throughout Europe, there are SO MANY languages being spoken all the time ... usually the masses of tourists. But what struck me was hearing Indians, or Africans, or Koreans speaking fluent Italian with one another. In my ever-expanding world view, it seemed odd at first; I wasn't expecting to hear Italian from them. But why not ... I was in Italy after all. It sounds silly I know but take some time to think about it. Would you be surprised if you heard an Indian person speaking German or a Korean person speaking Spanish? Same goes for little kids. My first thought at a little kid speaking German was "damn, that's impressive." ... followed 2 seconds later by "wait, that's what they learned to speak." it's easy to be impressed by people speaking a language you don't know. It's easy to assume people that look like you will speak your language. It's harder to realize or believe that the people that don't look like you can speak other languages than you might expect. I've given up being surprised by who speaks what language. It's all communication. The kids are still asking if they can have ice cream and how much longer this line is going to take ... you just can't understand their language. For some reason, these revelations didn't really hit me in Vietnam ... even though I'm a white person who can speak some conversational Vietnamese. Ironically, when I was in Spain and people assumed I spoke Spanish (I do ... just not well), it was flattering.
3. Children are assholes and parenting is hard. I cannot count the number of kids I wanted to kick in the face because they were doing stupid shit. And their parents are either just watching them or not even paying attention. I had a kid at the aquarium who was standing on my left with a good view of the tank but I guess he wanted to be where I was, so he walked to my right side and basically pushed me out of the way. I looked down at him like "WTF dude" ... parents just looked at me like "What?" 4. Many adults are either assholes, idiots, or just lack self awareness. Museums with signs at the start of EVERY room saying "No photography" ... in picture form too ... enter room and see people taking photographs. I feel sorry for the museum staff in charge of saying "no photos" 10984 times per day. People at the airport who think they can quietly merge into the front of the line for boarding without you noticing. People at the hostels who come in at 2am either from a late flight or from partying then proceed to turn on the lights and sound like a bull in a frickin' china shop. Do you even see the other 7 people in here already sleeping!?! And then there are the people who ask the front desk "do you know why my phone isn't working here?" --> "Well, where are you from?" --> "US" --> "Do you have an international plan?" --> *blank stare* ... or better yet "no, but can't I still use WhatsApp to call people?" --> "only if you're on Wifi" --> "Do they have Wifi in Rome?" . . . Bless your heart honey
I completely forgot to include this in the Greece post but thought it was so cool I should still share it. So as I was flying into Rhodes, we passed over many of the Greek islands. I had a window seat so I was looking out the window at a lot of them. Off the coast of a few of them (just offshore) were rows of circles, like very neatly organized, clearly man made. My first thought was pearl farming. In Vietnam some of the pearl farms near Cat Ba put baskets of oysters in the ocean to make pearls. It took a few islands before I realized that these circles are bigger than the houses that dot the islands... those would be some big baskets. So back to square 1, no idea what these things are. After a lot of creative Googling, I found out that they are for fish farming. The math puzzle from Vienna
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ShannonMath Teacher living and working in Hanoi, Vietnam Archives
February 2022
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