Watch out for the Soap Box!

I’m leaving for my last minute trip to the Cook Islands from my extended holiday in New Zealand… I am still marveling that it is possible to have a lifestyle that supports such a statement, and more importantly it is possible without winning the lottery – just a readjustment of one’s life.

The afternoon before my flight I met up with Amelia, a Kiwi friend, and her friend from San Francisco for coffee and conversation that was so enjoyable it merits mention 2 weeks later. Then back to the hostel for dinner with a Dutch girl, Jacquelyn and the sole other American here at the hostel. Jackie speaks 4 languages, grew up between Holland and South Africa, and after continual badgering on my part demonstrated a little Zulu which is a click language (damn, I was impressed). The American girl is a Pharmacy student on her international rotation. She decided to spend her free 3 weeks in New Zealand in one place, grew up in suburban Colorado, is moving to suburbs between Ft. Worth and Dallas to work for the prison system, 25 and once divorced. It would be an understatement to say the contrast was severe, particularly when geopolitics came up in conversation. It would also be unfair to consider this a reasonable contrast of a European to an American. Yet, I realized that this American would probably standout as worldly back home because she had been to New Zealand and the Dutch girl probably would not. This is most likely the best example I have so far for the differences between the rest of the western world, consisting of countries where traveling and knowledge of rest of the world is culturally engrained, and the US where our culture is nearly devoid of curiosity about the outside world.

I’ll have to think of a good way to help change that… let me know if you have any good ideas.