Job Discussion Forums

[ecocks]

Couple of things after reading through all the posts. Sorry for the length but you don't have to read it if you aren't interested in the topic. We don't have to argue, but it doesn't hurt to discuss.

I daresay that passport percentages and amount of travel of average Americans, Russians, Indians and Chinese is not too different. Our countries are huge and populations are measured in the hundreds of millions. It would be a better comparison to see how many Europeans have visited America, Asia or South America and use that percentage for comparison before you start in with too much half-baked analysis of our reasons.

As another poster mentioned, Americans have world class skiing, beaches, mountain climbing, surfing, amusement parks, hunting, camping, cruise ships and fishing areas as well as families which are spread over much wider areas yet are still within our own borders. Cultures are different as well � Cajun food in Louisiana, different pizzas in Chicago and New York, Tex-Mex cuisine in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico; soft, Southern accents in the Deep South, nasal twangs in the New England area, Texas drawls - all are part of our world which we continue to explore. Barbeque in Tennessee is different than in Texas, Missouri or North Carolina. Add to that the fact that we have no internal national identification passport/card system and, until recently could travel into our two closest neighboring countries without passport requirements. Many Americans simply are still seeing their own country and will get around to the rest of the world later.

In talking to many Europeans, few truly grasp how internally mobile the American has been for centuries. Intellectually, they know we have a lot of cars but they struggle with understanding how this affects our view of life. It is not uncommon for either individuals or families to just decide to move cross-country 4 or 5 thousand kilometers just because they feel like living in a different area. I have not met many Europeans who can comprehend doing that without family or a waiting job on the other end of the trip. Only within the last decade have Eastern Europeans begun to see swelling migration of rural dwellers into urban areas. The industrialized countries in Western Europe have seen this trend for several decades and it is spreading eastward, especially the move into capitals looking for employment.

To put it in perspective, many Americans cannot understand the European attitude towards metro, bus and train travel. Our reality is everyone has a car so we use them,. Except in a very few of our major cities, we don�t have subway/metro systems and hardly anyone uses public transportation. We think our buses and trains are in bad condition and take too long for point-to-point travel, yet they are far above the standard of bus and train travel here (Eastern Europe). It is neither right nor wrong, simply different perspectives on the same facet of life.

[mcl sonya]

Yeah, it's interesting how many Europeans don't know how different the regions of the US are, especially when they launch into their generalizations of Americans. When I lived in France most people were flabbergasted by how my friends and I were so different from their idea of Americans (multilingual, without ipods, one was communist, etc). That said, most Americans I know haven't traveled outside of their region more than briefly, unless they're moving for work or college. I have to say Eastern Europe is light years ahead of Southern California in terms of public transit. So Cal depresses me so much. I'm always stunned to find there are people who drive a block and a half to pick up their kids from school and think global warming is a hoax by Al Gore to win the next presidential election.

I haven't started teaching in China yet, but I've basically always had a passport. I went to Taiwan a lot while growing up. In my teens I was really serious about becoming a professional musician some day and traveled around playing trumpet, and as a result I've seen most of the country. One summer I got a scholarship to study in Finland, and that launched me into backpacking around Europe and Israel. I've been back to both places multiple times over the last three years. I lived in the south of France one year, spent a summer in Andalucia, and spent about a third of a year (added up) in Israel. Visited a few other places in between.