Cross Cultural Experiences

We began our trip in Rio exploring the city and going to two social projects within two favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Each place was different, yet the feeling in the communities were the same... pride and concern for the well-being of their community members. The social projects that we visited were well aware and informed of the influences and behaviors that change lives in both positive and negative ways. In our interactions, we were able to understand some of these difficulties and how the social projects have helped the communities.



We arrived in Salvador a few days ago and have been learning a great deal about Baiana and Brazilian culture. Today part of our group visited an organization called Jovens Aprendizes. This organization helps black adolescents to obtain professional experience and to help them on their journey. Our conversation began with the typical introductions and coming to know one another questions. Once we were all comfortable, the conversation changed to the more serious topics. We began by explaining why we were here in Brasil and what we planned to do with our time. We were clear that our intentions for being here in Brasil go deeper than being a tourist to a new country. We were here to learn and to understand Brazilian culture. The ideas that were shared were that as Americans, we did not want the actions of our government to dictate how people thought about us as people. During our conversation, we came to realize that in general Brazilians knew more about our culture than we do about theirs. The unfortunate part is that how they learned about our culture is from TV, movies and music. These are not the best examples of our culture considering most of it is for entertainment purposes (which means it can be far fetched). What we were adamant about was the we had come to learn so that in the future we will be better informed global citizens. How does one become a global citizen without traveling to locations and talking to people? The truth is, you can read a great deal about a place, but unless you have been there and experienced it with the people, you can not fully understand the culture.



Our conversation continued with topics such as what is considered beautiful in the US and Brasil, immigration, the upcoming elections, race and class and how they can be connected at times and the implications that has on society and stereotypes. In the end, we realized that our two countries have many things in common in regards to race and class and we have much to learn from each other.



I must say that I really enjoyed the fact that the teens were all so open and willing to share with us their perceptions and ideas about their culture, our culture and the world.

More to come...