Today I rode my bike to Balboa Park to finish off "Made to Stick" and enjoy an unusually warm January afternoon outdoors. Sitting on a bench in front of the coy pond it dawned on me one of the reasons I love America: the diversity of people you see on a day-to-day basis.
In Uganda everyone was African, with the exception of a few missionaries, British businesspeople and foreign journalists. In Honduras everyone was pretty much Latin. People looked different from each other, but not drastically like here.
I wasn't at the Park more than 30 minutes and I saw people from more than a dozen nations. How beautiful. People marvel at the diversity of fish in an aquarium, but people are no less diverse, I think. I love encountering so many different countries and cultures without even having to get into my car.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
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3 comments:
I've heard about this unusually warm weather you're having. It's been way colder than usual out here. Supposed to be below freezing on Thursday. :/
I gained a new respect for this country's ethnic diversity when I went to Korea. It was a pretty cool place, but (nearly) everyone was Korean...and with my American background seeing millions of people who are mostly the same ethnicity was exceedingly weird.
Even though I live in a small suburban college town, I see the same kind of diversity everyday just walking to work or to the grocery store or to a coffee shop. It's something that I think more people should see as an upside before writing off the United States as a total cultural loss, haha.
So true! When I traveled to Japan, that was the thing I missed most. America is so rich in culture.
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