Getting past the gee whiz

In a recent Facebook note from Ecuador, Howard Culbertson wrote about how people in other countries get a distorted view of the U.S. from watching television programs that originate in the U.S. Specifically, Fox's "The Simpsons" is not a realistic picture of how most U.S. families function, although apparently some people in Ecuador believe that it is. Of course, we in the U.S. often have distorted views of other countries based on television or news programs. Sometimes we don't even know where other countries are. I remember when we moved to Costa Rica, some of my friends thought we were in Puerto Rico, and when we lived in Guatemala a very common perception among many stateside friends was that we spent pesos and Guatemalans wore wide brimmed sombreros a la Mexicana. (Guatemalans spend quetzales and the most common type of hat is the kind of cowboy hat that I see all over Oklahoma.) I'm not really coming down hard on anybody because I've had (and probably still have) a lot of ignorant assumptions about countries I've never visited.

So, one of the great things about international travel is that you get to test your assumptions against reality: Do they really dress that way? Do they really eat that? What's important to them? Why do they think like that? You can address some of the ignorance and untested assumptions through short trips of 10-14 days. However, for most of us that is really not long enough. For one thing, on a short trip I'm usually either spending most of my time in meetings (if it's a business trip) or snapping pictures and sampling all the different foods I can (if it's a pleasure trip). It takes a while to get past the initial gee whiz impressions and find time to explore how other people are, what they do and how they think. Perhaps one of the important distinctions between short trips and longer trips is that on the longer trips you have time to get past all the new and interesting sights and sounds and smells (the gee whiz) and get to the people, which to me is what the pleasure of international travel is all about.