I went to Australia with SEA Program and in Australia, I experienced a lot of things.
I stayed with my host family for 6 weeks. And there were another 2 exchanged students. One of them is 28 year-old woman from Venezuela and she was so nice that I felt she was a real my older sister. The other is 35 year-old woman from China. She was a professor of fisheries college. And also at school, I made a lot of friends who are from various countries.
Before I went to Australia, I had stereotypes that Venezuelan people are messy and Chinese people are not so good. This is very bad stereotypes.... However, in fact, my Venezuelan house mate was so nice and she was not messy. After she used kitchen, she cleaned there and after she used washroom, she cleaned there so I could use very comfortable. So my stereotype was wrong. And also, I made a lot of Venezuelan friends through her and they were also very good and kind to me so my thought for Venezuelan people was changed into good impression. However, my Chinese house mate was very messy. She has long hair and every morning, she used washroom to wet her hair and wash her face and so on and when I enter washroom after she used, there were a lot of her hair and water. It was very unpleasant. In terms of this point, my stereotype toward the Chinese was not so wrong but I saw only her behaviour so I cannot say all of the Chinese are like her.
Through the SEA Program, I felt that only one person can make impression of that country. And the impression will connect to the stereotype. I have to behave carefully not to make bad impression of Japan to another countries' people especially when I am in foreign country. I think stereotypes are not so good because if the stereotypes are bad, we feel unpleasant to him or her and we escape to have connection with them. However, some of the stereotypes or most of them are wrong in some ways. So we shouldn't have stereotypes and we have to communicate a lot of people from all over the world to make us more good people.
2 件のコメント:
Hi Tomoe,
Thanks so much for your entry. I agree with what you are saying about stereotypes. I am reminded of a person I used to know who worked out at a gym near Musashi-sakai Station. He was from Iran, and as you might know, the US and Iran have a very bad relationship. Yet Ali, that was his name, was probably the nicest person I could imagine. The fact that our countries were nearly at war with one another had nothing to do with the two of us.
So there is a lot to be said for treating everyone as an individual.
Ken
hi tomoe,
yeah, all of your friends from Venezuela are surely so nice. it was good on you to make so many friends in Australia!!
as you know, i stayed with a woman from Hong Kong. in fact, she was also messy... but it has nothing to do with our friendship because i know much more good things of her character!!
its not good to write others down unpleasant through only one aspect. we should be careful not to miss the chance to make friends because of the stereotypes. its really sad, isnt it?
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